‘Everyone’s bailing’: Australian teachers speak on stress and uncertainty of increasing casual contracts
Australian teachers have revealed the personal toll of the increasing casualisation of the workforce, saying shortterm contracts for years on end force them to forego holiday pay and frequently reapply for their position.
Experts across the country have been warning of a looming teacher shortage as fewer people take up the profession. They say low pay, a lack of respect and increasing workloads have dampened teacher recruitment.
The New South Wales Teachers Federation says its state alone will need 11,000 new teachers in the next 10 years, and200,000 extra students are projected to enter NSW’s schools over the next 20 years.
Multiple teachers have told Guardian Australia that poor working conditions, including constant insecure work, were driving people out of the profession.
Anna*, a 28-year-old teacher in Sydney, told Guardian Australia that short-term, constantly changing contracts were becoming frequent.
She said she considered herself “super lucky” to work at an “exceptional” public school, but she was only on a “term to term” contract.
“While I know I am here for the whole year, it means my holidays are not paid for. And because it’s a contract you don’t get any casual loading,” she said.
She said she had been on a range of temporary contracts since she graduated into the workforce, including yearly, term to term, and even twoweek contracts.
“It feels really dodgy, but you are employed by the government,” she told Guardian Australia. “It’s stressful having no job security – they could get rid of you any moment.
“For younger teachers like myself, we all find it stressful and chaotic. I am one of two people of 25 who I went through my degree with who still teaches. Everyone else is bailing, they don’t want to do it.”
Last week, a government discussion paper found the proportion of highachieving school graduates – those under 20 years old with an Atar over 80 – who choose to study teaching had dropped by a third since 2006.
“[Those who left] are some of the best people I know,” Anna said.
“I was hoping I was just awful and selfish [in wanting to leave], and other people still want to teach, but that’s not the case.”
William* taught English as a second language from 2003 to 2019. He said he had been on temporary contracts for the past eight years, including five years at one school.
“It became normal, in fact, to live that way,” he told Guardian Australia.
He said for five years in a row he had to reapply for his position at a school in Sydney’s south-west.
“One year I was approached by the principal in the middle of a year 12 English class and asked ever so politely: ‘Do you intend to reapply for your position next year? We haven’t heard back from you yet.’
“My students were quite amused to see me having to explain myself to the principal through the doorway. That was the fourth year at that school.”
William said the experience was “profoundly negative”, and he has now left the teaching profession.
“Temps really have to commit to wherever they are, without receiving any corresponding commitment in return. That is quite degrading.
“You would be told you are doing well, you are an asset to this school, then there is a time when you are called into the principal’s office and told you are being disposed of.”
Anna said she was also considering changing careers, because teaching wasn’t valued enough, either through pay or secure employment.
“I myself have nearly finished a master’s degree in something else, so I will be dipping out when and if I can. But it’s tough and people don’t recognise teaching as actual work.”
Fred*, a music teacher, told Guardian
Australia that temporary work was becoming the norm, and it forced people to teach outside their subject area.
“I could teach history and social sciences, but it wasn’t my subject area. They said you’re the best candidate for it, we have the materials prepared, ready to go, can you teach?” he said.
“It’s almost like a saying: to get your foot in the door, you have to teach not in your subject area.”
Fred said this was detrimental for students’ education as well as teacher morale.
“What is the point of so much excess registration, qualification work, if at the end of the day you are teaching out of your subject … through no fault of the teachers?” he said.
Fred is currently taking a break from teaching, and said that contract work and the associated paperwork would discourage him from coming back.
“I actually love teaching – I think teaching is one of the best things I could do. [But contracts are] maybe something that would keep me away.” William said he would not return. “There is an intense and personally felt stress that is just ongoing,” he said.
“I felt at the end I was being asked to teach in classrooms where I had no experience – your pedagogy takes a nosedive every time you are forced to teach out of your speciality. I knew I was being put into positions where I was not performing well, and not giving the students what they deserve.
“I felt I could not sacrifice health and sanity to such a tenuous existence.”
*Names have been changed to protect identities