Work intensification
Queensland Teachers' Journal, Vol 129 No 4, 7 June 2024, page 7.
It is not surprising that teachers and education leaders cite the enormous increase in workload as the key driver of their dissatisfaction with their chosen profession and the reason they are leaving teaching.
The pressure is felt in a myriad of ways, but significantly it has affected the health and wellbeing of those working in schools. Schools continue to support students from diverse and often challenging backgrounds, and this complexity has an impact upon the workload of teachers and education leaders.
Through our state budget campaign, the QTU highlighted the need for additional funding to ensure our teachers and school leaders are adequately resourced to perform their duties and responsibilities. A mammoth increase in administrative compliance tasks and paperwork has led to educators spending their time filling in documentation that has nothing to do with their day-to day-teaching of students.
Unprecedented changes to professional expectations, in areas such as capability development and pedagogical approaches, as well as changes to the Australian Curriculum, have added to this workload burden. In an environment in which student/class profiles are increasingly complex, planning and preparation expectations and the push for detailed differentiation to verify funding decisions are further drivers of exhaustion.
These workload demands would be effectively reduced if the recommendations of the Comprehensive Review of School Resourcing were to be funded and implemented by the Queensland Government. A well-resourced system with supported and respected teaching professionals will result in better student outcomes. Teachers’ working conditions are students’ learning conditions!
Teachers and education leaders must also be encouraged and supported to “disconnect” outside of work hours, as successfully agreed in the last round of enterprise bargaining, and currently stated in the certified agreement. To this end, there needs to be an increase of resources and staffing; non-essential tasks must be reduced, and more administration tasks should be delegated to regional offices. This would allow teachers to undertake their role during work hours, rather than to work unsustainable hours.
Through the Valuing Our Profession campaign, the QTU continues to advocate for the department to address the unintended workload caused by an ad hoc approach to the teacher shortage and remove the expectation that Queensland Teacher’s’ Union members will participate in activities outside of school hours, or other activities that are not essential to student learning and the provision of safe workplaces.
If we are to attract new teachers to the profession and retain the great teachers already in the system, QTU members need to feel as if they are truly valued by their employer. Negotiation and advocacy continue.