More than 4000 NSW teachers who left the classroom to take administrative roles such as assistant and deputy principal will have to return to the classroom next year, if they haven’t already.
In one of the Minns government’s most significant school overhauls, the Coalition’s Local Schools, Local Decisions policy is being progressively unwound as part of a broader plan to rein in costs and plug critical classroom teacher shortages.
The non-teaching tasks schools have been performing are also being audited to determine which ones can be transferred back to the department, scrapped or reduced to free up more teaching hours, while recruitment of teachers to non-teaching executive roles will be paused.
Introduced in 2012, the policy led to billions of dollars being shifted from the Department of Education to schools, which were given greater autonomy to make their own decisions.
However, a review last year found it instead led to an explosion of non-teaching executive roles as teachers were pulled out of the classroom to perform a growing list of new, administrative tasks.
As schools became “mini-departments”, the number of executive staff grew as they tackled support learning, HR, finance and other administrative duties outside of the classroom. Deputy and assistant principal positions grew the most over that time, rising by 85 per cent and 62 per cent respectively.
As these positions grew, the number of classroom teachers flatlined and education outcomes went backwards.
“Rebuilding the NSW public school system must be our collective priority and focus,” NSW Teachers Federation President Henry Rajendra said.
“The NSW public school system must return to operating as a system, supported by a robust non-school based teaching service, rather than over 2200 individual schools operating independently, without the system support they need.”
Yesterday’s announcement confirms the minimum teaching hours from last year’s reforms will be fully implemented in 2025. From next year, teachers in additional deputy principal positions in all but the state’s most complex settings will be expected to teach between 2 and 2.5 days a week, while additional head teachers and assistant principals are expected to be in the classroom 3.5 to 4 days a week.
It is expected to result in the equivalent of 500 teachers being returned to the classroom. It is not clear to what extent it will fill the current 104 teacher vacancies across the New England, but the number of non-teaching support staff required, for which there are currently vacancies in every local government area across the region, will increase.
Deputy Premier and Minister for Education and Early Learning Prue Car said the previous policy took some of our most experienced teachers off class at a time when we had a chronic teacher shortage.
“We are correcting that by bringing them back into the classroom where their experience and knowledge is needed the most.
“The historic pay rise delivered to teachers last year as well as our decision to make thousands of teachers permanent members of staff is helping to turn the system around, but our students have been missing out on being taught by some of our expert teachers.
“We can’t afford to have our teachers with the greatest expertise off class.”
The Department of Education will continue to work with the NSW Teachers Federation to ensure teaching time, wherever possible for executive teachers across the system, is in line with their industrial agreements.
Something going on in your part of the region you think people should know about? Send us a news tip or email newsdesk@netimes.com.au.