Last week, I heard about a secondary school in eastern Victoria that is still trying to fill over 25 teaching positions that have been listed since the beginning of the year. At the same time, Education Minister Ben Carroll announced reforms that will mandate reading instruction and the “science of learning”.
Come 2025, Victorian government schools will be forced to move away from the current reading system, which allows principals and teachers to choose educational approaches based on student needs. Taking its place will be a mandated systematic synthetic phonics policy for students from prep to year 2.
Taking teachers away from the work they value most won’t solve the problem.Credit: istock
What does this have to do with teacher retention rates? More than you might think.
Though many are singing Carroll’s praises, these swift and encompassing reforms ultimately disrespect and fundamentally undermine teacher professionalism and judgment.
Like any other profession, teachers value freedom and agency when it comes to doing the jobs they are trained to do. This includes determining the best methods to use when teaching their students core skills like reading. The methods applied change from year to year, class to class, moment by moment. It is one of the most rewarding parts of the job and why I love teaching so much.
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Diminishing this freedom and introducing a blanket one-size-fits all approach across the state is more likely to exacerbate the increasing exodus of Victorian teachers, especially those with years of experience behind them, than it is keep us.
It’s no secret that staffing the education sector, both in Victoria and nationally, is reaching crisis point. The main reasons for this are school leadership and workload. Teachers who are burnt out, over-extended and forced to make difficult decisions daily are leaving the profession at record rates.
In January, just weeks before term 1 started, there were 801 vacant education positions within Victoria being advertised. By March, the government had published its long-overdue reporting into teacher supply and demand, which predicted the state will reach a shortfall of more than 5000 teaching staff across Victoria by 2028, and forecast demand for teachers across early childhood education and schools will increase by 12.8 per cent, while staff supply will increase by only 10.6 per cent.