Saul Karnovsky: Teachers are overworked, underpaid and stressed to the max

Next Tuesday, WA’s public primary and high school teachers could strike for half the day over their pay and work conditions. No teacher enjoys walking off the job. As in most industries, it’s usually the last resort when negotiations have reached a stalemate and a strike is seen as the only way to see the opposite party budge on their offer. So, how did we get to this point? Like the rest of the country, WA’s teaching profession has reached a crisis point. Our teachers are overworked, underpaid, and undervalued and ready to quit. We know our teachers are struggling. A Black Dog Institute report shows that they are up to six times more anxious, depressed, and stressed than the average Australian. Research from the Australian Catholic University shows teachers also face violence in their professional lives up to 11 times more frequently than the rest of us. It’s little wonder that Australia, including WA, faces an unprecedented teacher shortage in the next few years. This is a situation of our own making. For too long, we have heaped unreasonable responsibilities, requirements and standards upon the shoulders of teachers. They are required to do more for young people, their families and society with fewer resources than ever. School funding is broken, and the disadvantaged continue to be locked out of education opportunities. The curriculum is overstuffed and out-of-date. We test students within an inch of their lives and make them memorise information that is of little relevance to them. Behavioural challenges in schools are mounting and learner diversity is increasing along every dimension. It does not take an academic like me to see the work of teaching has never been more challenging. So what our teachers are asking for isn’t unreasonable. They want adequate pay for the work they do — which is usually 50 hours a week to meet their job requirements — within a rising cost-of-living crisis. But teachers don’t get into the work for pay. In fact most WA teachers tell us it’s not pay that will keep them teaching, it’s a more manageable workload and better work-life balance that truly matters to them. As a comparison, the Victorian Government is investing $1.6 billion into their teaching workforce. Part of this funding will go to reducing the maximum face-to-face teaching hours, which in real terms means a teacher will have more hours in their day to prepare and plan engaging lessons and assess their students comprehensively. Victorian teachers also have much smaller class sizes than WA, as they only teach up to 26 young people per class in Years 4 to 10, compared to 32 in WA. As a teacher educator for over a decade, I’ve worked with thousands of passionate, caring and eager people who want to become teachers. They enrol in our courses because they are generally called to the profession because they want to make a difference in the lives of young people and do a meaningful job. If the WA Government does not improve our State teachers’ pay and conditions, the profession will certainly not be able to attract the best of us to the classroom, and it will also continue to lose those who already perform this essential service for our communities. In a State as rich as ours in human and resource capital, the WA Government should do everything it can to value the teaching profession and provide a leading example for managing better workload, conditions, and pay. Saul Karnovsky is a senior lecturer at Curtin University’s School of Education.