New South Wales teachers are warning that the state's teacher shortage will return unless educators are given more time to prepare for their classes, armed with a new poll of 1,400 union members, AAP reports. The survey found about 85 percent of teachers considered leaving education because of shortfalls in preparation time, and nine in ten said a guaranteed extra two hours a week would make them more likely to stay.
The NSW Teachers Federation says allocated preparation hours are far too short. Primary teachers receive two hours a week — 24 minutes a day — to speak to parents, write disciplinary reports and amend lesson plans for students with additional needs. Preparation time has not increased for primary teachers since the 1980s and is unchanged for secondary teachers since the 1950s, according to EducationHQ.
Teachers and parents converged on Macquarie Street on Wednesday with an open letter signed by 16,000 teachers and parents, pressing for the first improvement to preparation time in more than four decades. NSW Teachers Federation president Henry Rajendra said 95 percent of teachers surveyed felt the complexity of students' needs had grown since they began teaching. The number of students with disability in NSW public schools has risen 75 percent to more than 220,000 since 2021, with the great majority now learning in mainstream classrooms, the federation says.
Josh Gonzales, a 30-year-old secondary teacher from the Illawarra region, told AAP that early mornings and long Sunday evenings making up for lost preparation time pushed him close to dumping the profession "a couple of times on the bad days." NSW Education Minister Prue Car responded that providing widespread release time would require significantly more teachers and could create vacancies just as the sector recovers from chronic shortages.
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