Time to teach — time to learn

Excessive teacher workload is one of the major issues confronting public education today and must be a priority issue for the NSW Teachers Federation. Identified both by individual teachers in their daily work, and by various surveys and through the work of the Federation's Excessive Teacher Workload committee, unreasonable teacher workload is debilitating for the profession and quality public education. Many teachers report that workload is overwhelming their professional capacity and their ability to engage in activities beyond work which most others take for granted. Many also report that workload is impacting adversely on their health.

Teacher commitment to the inclusive and representative nature of public education cannot be too strongly emphasised. Public education is available to and caters for students from all socio-economic, cultural, religious and geographic areas of Australian society. It remains the most powerful and efficient force for social equity and harmony in the nation.

Unfortunately governments have for too long exploited the commitment of teachers and their professionalism to fill the growing gaps in staffing, funding and resourcing our public schools. It has become all too common for governments to announce new initiatives, with no commitment to appropriate resourcing, including release time for teachers. All too often it is assumed that the latest initiative can be loaded on top of what teachers already do. Schools and TAFE colleges are frequently inundated with paper policies, initiatives and curricula, uncoordinated and under-resourced and with no acknowledgement of the teacher time involved in their implementation. Repeated calls on both the Department of Education and Training (DET) and the State Government to assess the workload implications of initiatives prior to introduction are ignored. Such an approach is disrespectful to both the profession and the students they teach.

This approach has been evidenced in recent initiatives relating to audit and administrative requirements in TAFE, reporting, technology, occupational health and safety and accreditation of new scheme teachers.

Frequently, this intensification of teachers' work has been worsened by decisions made within particular workplaces which have broadened the role and workload of teachers, so that in many cases teachers have difficulty in accessing such basic entitlements as lunch and morning tea breaks. For many teachers, the school or college day leaves little time for reflection or preparation, with a constant round of playground and/or other duties, committee meetings, programming, development and/or implementation of new policies, dealing with difficult students, marking, interviews with parents, selection panels and addressing occupational health and safety issues.

Teachers are the ones best placed to make decisions about the centrality of teaching and learning in education. It is teachers who must be allowed to control the management of this workload. Quality outcomes for students in our public schools can be further enhanced when teachers are freed from excessive and unreasonable workload. Teachers must be allowed to focus on teaching and learning. International best practice indicates that is quality teaching time and not quantitative time that produces optimum outcomes for all students.

It is clear that the 21st century demands of teaching and learning can only be addressed by a commitment by the State Government to significant improvements to the staffing formulae that apply in our schools and colleges, by the employment of additional teaching staff and the recognition that teaching today requires more time for teachers to prepare, more time to engage with students outside the formal classroom situation, and more time to engage professionally with colleagues to support teaching and learning.

To address the issue of excessive teacher workload, Federation will commence the Time to Teach -- Time to Learn campaign.

Key objectives of this campaign will be improvements to school and college staffing formulae and the employment of additional teachers to ensure that the staffing of schools and colleges is able to properly support quality education today. Specifically, the improvements in staffing sought are:

a) an additional two hours release time per week for teachers in primary schools, in high schools and central schools

b) the inclusion of part time positions in the calculation of whole school staffing for central schools

c) an additional two 40 minute periods or time equivalent per week for secondary teachers

d) an additional one hour release time per week for TAFE teachers

e) alignment of release for primary promotions positions with release available to secondary promotions positions

f) extension and improvement of the current concessional allowance available to secondary schools so that primary, secondary and central schools receive a concessional allowance of 0.1 release for each six teachers (full time equivalent) or part thereof

g) enhancements to clerical and other support staffing in schools and colleges, to be based on the number of teachers located in the workplace

h) the provision of supplementary staffing to ensure curriculum provision in the transition from years 11 to 12

i) investigate and pursue the reduction, or phasing out, of playground duty for teaching staff.

In addition to campaigning for improvements in the staffing of schools and colleges, the Federation will also:

1. pursue the restoration of minimum lunchbreaks of 30 minutes and recess breaks for all teachers, to be used at the teacher's discretion and uninterrupted by playground (or similar duties) and meetings

2. establish guidelines to manage and reduce workload in schools and colleges. Such guidelines will also address the issue of workload arising from the excessive number of meetings conducted in some workplaces, especially when relief is not provided

3. Federation is to develop policy guidelines of what can be reasonably expected for programming/unit development and teacher generated documentation or individual teachers as part of the supervisory process

4. pursue the provision of appropriate levels of technology support for schools and TAFE colleges, including the provision of specialist technicians in sufficient numbers to support all schools and TAFE colleges, and adequate resources to ensure all staff and students can access DET internet services using their own working passwords

5. pursue significant improvements in the way existing curricula and new curricula are introduced and supported in schools and colleges. This will include pursuing with the DET measures to ensure that on-line curriculum and professional learning initiatives such as the Teaching and Learning Exchange and the Learning Federation project are developed in consultation with practising teachers and meet the needs of schools and colleges

6. establish explicit written guidelines with the DET as to the expectation of early career teachers in relation to the format and reasonable documentation around programming and lesson planning

7. require that teacher relief time in high schools be specifically and explicitly stated in terms of 40 minute period equivalents in exactly the same way face-to-face teaching periods and sport currently are and require that teachers actually get this amount of time

8. Federation seek extra release time for teachers for training and practice to implement new technologies, such as on line learning resources, interactive whiteboards, and other technology-based learning materials.

The Federation Executive and Council are to develop and implement appropriate political, industrial and legal strategies to support this campaign in the second half of 2007 and in the lead up to the 2008 State Budget. Such strategies will also include use of the occupational health and safety legislation when appropriate. To support and promote the campaign, extensive use is to be made of Education, advertising, posters and the Federation website.

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Last Modified: 30 Aug 2007