New South Wales (NSW) schools will be able to recruit more support staff to help reduce “an endless amount of paperwork” that teachers have to deal with every day.
The initiative is part of an election promise by the centre-left NSW Labor government to ease the regulatory burden on teachers so that they can focus more on teaching, which will ultimately improve students’ outcomes.
Education Minister Prue Car said on Thursday that from term 3, another 284 public schools can employ an extra 400 full-time administration staff or offer more hours to existing staff.
This is an addition to 203 administration roles already in 128 schools.
This means that teachers will have more help with tasks such as timetabling, preparing excursions, liaising with bus companies, and organising permission slips.
Administrative staff can also log student performance data into spreadsheets, manage parental payments, update newsletters, and contact parents about events.
Speaking at a roundtable with key stakeholders in public education at Parramatta on Thursday, Car said teachers “signed up to teach our children not to fill out paperwork.”
“More time to teach frees up teachers to focus on better outcomes in the classroom,” she said, AAP reported.
“We can’t afford to see more teachers leave the profession at a time when we are already dealing with a teacher shortage crisis.”
Teachers Should Be Teaching, Not Doing Admin
In April, NSW Premier Chris Minns said the government is looking to support teachers by expanding the school counselling service, providing more well-being support for teachers and simplifying reporting to parents.
“We want teachers in front of students in classrooms, not bogged down with admin work. We have too many burdensome programs and admin tasks that is resulting in unsustainable workloads for teachers,” Minns said.
“We’ve made good on a promise to reduce admin hours for teachers. And we know we have more to do.”
The move is part of the school administration improvement program that commenced in term three last year. Early results from the initial trial showed it led to a notable reduction in paper workload, Car said.
The program will be expanded across all 2,200 schools next year.
The government is also promising a suite of measures to be rolled out in schools in the next two years to ease the bureaucratic burden on teachers and principals.
The Public Service Association (PSA), which represents administrative school staff, corporate staff, general assistants and school learning support officers, welcomed the move.
“Support staff is critical to making sure our kids, especially those with disabilities, learning difficulties, and challenging home environments, can make it through the mainstream school system,” PSA general secretary Stewart Little said.
“This investment ... will allow teachers to concentrate on lesson preparation and quality teaching.”
According to the OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS), Australian teachers were more likely than teachers in other countries to reduce administrative burden by hiring more specialist staff.Teachers Working Longer Hours Due To Red Tape
A report by the Australian Teacher Workforce Data found that teachers were working an average of 140 to 150 percent of their paid hours.
The main reason for the overtime was that they needed to devote more time to teaching preparation and assessment tasks, followed by administrative tasks. Of registered teachers, 83 percent worked in schools, and six percent worked in early childhood services.
Another survey by the NSW Parliament shows that up to 92 percent of teachers believe reducing paperwork is the most effective way to reduce teachers’ high turnover rate. It was reported that from 2010 to 2021, more than 28,000 permanent staff had left the state’s public schools.
In December 2022, the former Liberal government said it had helped slash 40 hours of public school teachers’ administrative burden and saved principals 212 hours and school-based non-teaching staff 71 hours through its Quality Time program.
“I’m proud we’ve exceeded our target to reduce the administrative burden on our principals, teachers and support staff by 20 percent,” Shadow Minister for Education and Early Learning Sarah Mitchell Mitchell said at the time.
“Not only have we saved teachers time by scrapping unnecessary tasks, simplifying school budget processes and providing quality-assured teaching resources, we’re also giving teachers more time to prepare quality lessons from next year to support the new curriculum rollout.”
AAP contributed to this report.
