What teacher shortage? Government says ACT public schools to start the year 'fully staffed'

Sammy Grall might have dreamed of joining The Wiggles when she grew up, but she reckons she’s come pretty close in reality.

The University of Canberra (UC) education graduate is preparing to start the first term of 2025 as an arts specialist at Caroline Chisholm School junior campus in Tuggeranong.

“When I was a kid, my aspiration was to become the next Wiggle, but it didn’t work out, so instead I got into children’s party entertainment and I ended up realising that performing for kids as a princess is not that different from performing for kids as a teacher,” Sammy laughs.

After years of hard study, she’s looking forward to finally getting out of one classroom and into another.

“The school I’m going into is actually the school I went to when I was a child, and so to go back and get to connect with students who were in the same boat as I was is a really rewarding experience,” she says.

With the first day of school only two weeks away, Sammy is among more than 200 new educators who descended on the Shirley Smith High School in Kenny, Gungahlin, on Monday (20 January) for New Educator Induction Week.

“They’ll hear all about the directorate and what it’s like to work in ACT public schools, and they’ll also get some specific training and professional learning in their particular areas of interest,” Education Directorate CEO David Matthews explained.

“It’s about making sure our new educators get off to the best possible start.”

It’s a welcome change compared with five years ago.

In 2021, the ACT Branch of the Australian Education Union (ACT AEU) announced the ACT was facing a “critical shortage of teachers”.

“The ACT population is growing and less people are choosing teaching as a career, due to non-competitive pay and difficult workloads,” it said.

A survey by the union found more than half of the ACT principals who responded were “unable to fill ongoing or temporary positions at their school”.

Meanwhile, 97 per cent of school staff said students were “disadvantaged and their learning outcomes compromised by split or modified classes”.

Almost all teachers reported working unpaid overtime every week, while more than one-third of principals were regularly working between 10 and 15 hours of overtime a week.

Perhaps most damningly, “more than half of the classroom teachers surveyed would not recommend teaching as a career to family members or friends”.

In response, the ACT Government announced a taskforce to look into ways of addressing the shortage and a report of 20 recommendations was handed down in 2022.

These recommendations included getting teachers back into the classroom in the short term, alleviating workload pressure, looking after beginner teachers better, and developing smarter and more sustainable teacher recruitment plans.

The union described it as “only the beginning”.

“We know that the most important thing we can do to raise the status of teaching as a profession and get more people into teaching is to pay teachers more,” it said.

Sure enough, in July 2023, the government signed off on a new enterprise agreement, which made our teachers the best paid in the country, with a starting salary of $91,396 by the beginning of 2026.

On Monday, Mr Matthews said while the shortage issue hadn’t gone away entirely, for the first time in years, the ACT’s public schools were starting the year “fully staffed”.

“This year we start off the year with around 25 vacancies against around 4000 teachers employed, but of those 25 vacancies, we have more than 50 staff we’re in the process of placing,” he said.

He also said the rate at which employees were leaving the system had “stabilised since the pandemic”.

“There are a range of drivers for separation rates for us in the ACT, including some staff who are partners of people who work in the Defence force, people who move between the public service and teaching workforce more generally, and, of course, people move between the public and non-government systems.”

He said the positive swing had been largely brought about by the “highest rate of pay” in the country, as well as “good conditions of service” and “reduced teaching hours”.

Recent initiatives such as New Educator Induction Week were also designed to specifically help new recruits settle in.

“All the evidence says that if we can support people to become established as teachers, to feel comfortable in the role, to be supported by their peers and, of course, their supervisors, then what they will have is a long, successful career,” Mr Matthews said.

For ACT public schools, the first term starts on Monday, 3 February, for new students and Tuesday, 4 February, for continuing students. It ends on Friday, 11 April.