Page 1506 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 1 June 2022
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
I have met with the Work Health and Safety Commissioner in recent months too, and I am very encouraged by her strong approach and her commitment to stamp out unsafe working conditions across our city in all workplaces. We need to ensure that schools are supported to utilise the resources of this commission to the best of its ability. Let me take this opportunity to commit to continue to work with the Calwell High School community and all schools in Tuggeranong to best navigate this complex and difficult situation.
The “calls on” in this motion are straightforward. In this motion the Assembly is asking the government for a report on teacher numbers, projection for future staffing needs, and a plan to build our staffing cohort to meet those needs. This motion fundamentally supports process and transparency for already agreed upon policy directions, which is why I am pleased to see the minister’s support for this section of the motion.
The amendments we are supporting to the “notes” section provide clarity on the context and the position of the government in relation to these unfolding issues. The Teacher Shortage Taskforce is an important instrument for government in addressing shortages by doing what we can to support teachers. I hope that in fulfilling the “asks” of this motion, which simply support the ambitions of the taskforce, the government puts forward a practical yet bold plan to manage these shortages.
Teachers are the backbone of our schooling system, but it is necessary for us to be thinking creatively about the school environment as a whole and the types of supports that can and should be provided by our schools that go beyond the delivery of the curriculum and the learning objectives in each class. Schools are community facilities. They are hubs of activity. They are not only responsible for education but they provide whole of life pastoral care and support to young people.
The ACT Greens strongly back the government’s investments in youth and social workers and increased supports for teacher librarian training. Growing non-teacher roles through learning support and administrative officers as well will help to alleviate the intensity of the workloads on our teachers, which not only is important for ensuring their enjoyment of their jobs and their safety at work but will help in the retention of a high-quality teaching workforce across our system.
At the same time, we will need practical and almost immediate measures endorsed by the directorate and the union to reduce the workloads of our teachers. While we struggle to recruit enough teachers, we cannot afford to be bleeding qualified and committed educators because of unreasonable working conditions. As I said when we discussed this issue last year, without significant injections of funding into our public school system from our federal counterparts, public schools and the state and territory governments that run them are at pains to make the systemic reforms we already know need to occur. We have the plans, we know what works and we need increased investment locally and nationally to ensure that those plans, which have come from significant consultation and review, can be implemented wholeheartedly.
I take this opportunity to congratulate and welcome the incoming federal Minister for Education, the Hon Jason Clare MP, and look forward to seeing the new federal Labor
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video