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Taskforce examines teacher shortage

Posted on October 28, 2009, 7:07am

A new State Government taskforce may help overcome the ongoing challenge of recruiting and retaining appropriate teachers for Mount Gambier’s schools as a regional shortage looms.

However, key issues in resolving the situation may be left to the Industrial Relations Commission, which is continuing a hearing this week in Adelaide after a two-year stalemate in enterprise bargaining for the state’s teachers.

Education department regional director Garry Costello has welcomed formation of the State Government’s Teacher Education Taskforce, featuring university and education leaders to ensure schools have adequate numbers of quality teachers into the future.

“The taskforce will be very important for this region — we always end up with teachers in positions, but it is often very difficult to recruit them,” he said.

“Sometimes we have to rely on permanent relieving teachers to take positions or have people not qualified for the area they end up teaching in.”

Mr Costello said it was particularly difficult to recruit secondary teachers for languages, maths, technology and science — particularly physics.

“People who have high level skills in maths and physics are in demand in other areas of the workforce, where the pay can be significantly higher,” he said.

Mr Costello said he hoped some pay issues would be dealt with through conclusion of enterprise bargaining and welcomed the start of broader research into what would attract specialists to country areas.

He said this would build on the government’s 429 scholarships for students to train and teach in country areas, which had made a difference, along with online recruitment to secure people from interstate and overseas.

Australian Education Union South Australian vice-president Anne Crawford said the taskforce’s work would be crucial to ensure appropriately qualified teachers were available so every student in the state had access to high quality education.

“There is a real need for proper planning about replacing the large number of teachers due to retire in the next five years — anyone can see that by looking at the age profile of the teacher workforce,” she said.

“Principals are often beside themselves already at the start of year as they can’t get teachers with particular expertise.”

A national AEU survey this week showed 59pc of secondary schools had teachers working outside their area of expertise.

Ms Crawford said these concerns would be exacerbated with the government neglecting staffing implications of changes to the SACE system.

“For the last couple of decades, most schools have offered around 10 subjects at senior level, but now will virtually endeavour to provide unlimited student choice,” she said.

“That sounds fantastic, but it is a question of staffing — variety and choice means little if not delivered by experts.”

Education Minister Jane Lomax-Smith said there were adequate short-term teacher numbers, but the average age within the workforce was increasing and longer strategies were needed.

“We also need to look at new ways to ensure we have enough teachers for specialist subjects,” she said.

She said the taskforce would make recommendations to university and education sector leaders on top of recent government initiatives, including retraining of teachers for specialist areas, scholarships and country incentives.

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