It’s pretty hard to find anyone who seems to be loving their job at the moment.
A pandemic in its third year, a community desperate to move on and a virus that has no regard for the state of the world that existed before it started killing people.
Add to that the perilous state of the economy with prices up, interest rates up, workloads up, pretty much everything up — except for wages.
It’s perhaps unsurprising that the teaching workforce would be no different — tired, burnt out and feeling underpaid and undervalued.
It wasn’t all that long ago that parents across the country were getting firsthand experience of what it’s like to educate their children for seven hours a day.
Now everyone’s back in the classroom, teacher shortages are biting and something’s got to give.
Ministers in unison
The issues engulfing the sector aren’t new but have undoubtedly been exacerbated as the specter of coronavirus continues to loom.
An issues paper released ahead of yesterday’s meeting of education ministers pointed to perceptions of low pay, unfavorable working conditions and increasing workloads as responsible for an “unprecedented” staffing challenge that was the “single biggest issue” facing all school sectors.
On that, all state ministers were in unison on Friday.
“No matter which state minister would be speaking to you now, we’re all dealing with the same issues and challenges,” NSW Education Minister Sarah Mitchell said after the meeting.
“We all know we’ve got fantastic teachers working in all of our schools day in, day out. We need to be working on ways to keep them there.”
But if the teachers at their wits’ end were looking to a meeting of the nation’s education ministers for a sign that all their issues would soon be resolved, they’d have been left wanting.
Their pain has been heard, smiling ministers reassured as they pledged to act. But what exactly they will do remains unclear.
three priorities
Labor frontbencher Tanya Plibersek spent six years in opposition honoring her party’s education policies.
Now in government, the job has been handed to Jason Clare, who agreed yesterday’s meeting in Canberra.
He’s faced the unenviable task of taking on a portfolio in the middle of a storm having had little experience in the policy area.
That’s maybe why he’s often referred to his mother’s experiences working in schools and the power they have to transform lives.
But as for the policies that he’s keen to implement to make that happen — more time is needed.
Clare left yesterday’s meeting declaring three priorities: to encourage more people into teaching, to better prepare students for the workforce and to keep the teachers the sector already has.
Education department secretaries from across the country will now prepare a national action plan that will be presented to the ministers when they next meet in December.
Is it more than talk?
Clare was quick to dismiss any suggestion that the meeting had just been a talkfest.
“It’s not just talking,” he said.
“By listening to teachers, we got ideas we didn’t have before today.
“So today was about listening to teachers, harvesting those good ideas and now working on a plan that we can now implement to make a real difference.”
It would be baffling if yesterday was the first chance any of these ministers had to hear from teachers.
But after hearing from each of them, just having everyone at the table and working together sounded like progress.
“Today was a breath of fresh air,” WA’s Education Minister Sue Ellery said.
“These meetings have been really difficult over the last few years and I’ve been coming to them for the last five years.”
There’s little love lost in the Labor states over the removal of a federal Coalition education minister.
The NSW minister, herself a Coalition minister, didn’t seem particularly saddened either.
So, if they’re all now at the table and working together, it might well mean there’s a chance to save an education sector on the brink.
Frankly, they have no other option.
That’s the biggest bargaining chip teachers have — we need schools and they need to be staffed, preferably by teachers who want to be there and feel appreciated.
If COVID taught us anything, it’s that we can’t take that for granted.
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