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Time to fight age discrimination in the teaching profession by Brinsely Marlay 18 March 2014
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n a speech delivered to the NSW Teachers federation, Age Discrimination Commissioner, Susan Ryan urged teachers to turn their advocacy and activism efforts to ageist attitudes and practices in the employment and recruitment systems of the teaching profession. “In its 2018 projections for the teaching workforce, the Department of Education and Communities assumed that the bulk of older teachers will simply retire at 55 years, something it seems to see as natural and inevitable,” Commissioner Ryan said. “However, this is an expectation that can discriminate against older teachers who are capable of and willing to continue working.” Commissioner Ryan said that while more young teachers would be a part of the workforce solution to teaching shortages, they were not the only part. “Older teachers have a role to play as well, especially when we speak of recruitment and teacher shortages,” she said. “The NSW Teachers Federation is well placed to start that conversation, and bring it to the fore.” Commissioner Ryan said approaches to retention and recruitment of older teachers have been overlooked and
Above: Senator Susan Ryan in 1983 as Labor Minister for Education and Youth Affairs with Indigenous leaders. Right: Age Discrimination Commissioner, Susan Ryan
underdeveloped. “The teaching profession has some of the highest numbers of mature age workers of any sector”, she said. “It is also a fact that teaching is now the most sought after job for those people who are making a career change, which means that there is going to be a large number of older people looking to enter the teaching profession.” Commissioner Ryan said that anti older teacher prejudice and myths remained alive and were leading to unfair treatment of both younger and older teachers. “While it was essential to have in place legal restraints on age discrimination in the workplace, the solution is not all about laws,” she said. “The fundamental challenge is to change deeply held and heavily entrenched attitudes within the
labour market.” “Teachers should build on the great and long battles you have fought to tackle racist attitudes, reduce sex and disability discrimination and to overturn exclusion and harassment of people who are LGBTI,” Commissioner Ryan said. “Teachers have done powerful work in these vital areas of culture change, developing inclusive and respectful attitudes in pupils to help transform our society into a better one.” Commissioner Ryan said she hoped teachers would be part of the powerful stakeholder groups who will change the message about age and ageing.
National NAIDOC Poster Competition and nominations for the National NAIDOC Awards are now open. Forms are available online at www.naidoc.org.au or at your nearest Indigenous Coordination Centre. Poster competition entries close Friday 28 March. Award nominations close Wednesday 23 April.
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