Issues
Valuing the teaching profession By Angelo Gavrielatos President, New South Wales Teachers’ Federation
The following is a closing submission given by NSW Teachers’ Federation (NSWTF) President Angelo Gavrielatos (pictured right) to the Valuing the Teaching Profession independent inquiry in NSW on its final day last November. The inquiry, headed by former WA Premier Geoff Gallop, has been tasked by the NSWTF to look into investigate changes in the policies, procedures, practices and regulation of teaching and their impact on the work of teachers and principals. It is due to report its findings in February this year. This submission has been edited for clarity and brevity. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you again today. It is with great pride that I sit here having listened to all the evidence presented to this inquiry by teachers and principals, indeed representatives of the teaching service at large, working in settings across NSW. Their testimony reminds us that the teaching service is made up of passionate and committed professionals. They are the difference makers. The glue that holds our public education system together. As the evidence has shown, the period under review by this inquiry has been one of unprecedented change. Change in: • Curriculum, assessment and reporting policy and practice that has altered what is taught and how it is taught. • Technology, impacting on teaching practice, the curriculum and assessment, communication and administration. • The needs of students and the complexity of those needs. 20
Western Teacher January 2021
• The role of schools in our society and in local communities. • The resultant skills and expertise of teachers along with the responsibilities they have and the professional standards they are required to meet. Local Schools, Local Decisions, billed as the biggest reform in 100 years, has been the biggest disaster in 100 years. In an effort to cut costs and jobs, the department removed vital systemic support from schools in areas such as curriculum implementation, equity programs and student and staff welfare. In their place came a dysfunctional and ever-changing system of compliance and control, reporting and red tape.
resource level. It would take an additional $2 billion a year to lift them to that standard.1
All this has made the job of principals and teachers more difficult, more complex and time consuming, as we have heard.
And while workloads are at record levels, salaries have continued to slide below the average level of other professionals.
We must also acknowledge that every single day principals and teachers are doing more than should be expected of them to compensate for the underresourcing of our public schools.
Does anyone seriously believe that teachers, entrusted with the responsibility of securing the nation’s future, should be paid less than a PR person as they are now?
It is an unfortunate reality that the funding policies of the Commonwealth and NSW government leave public schools indefinitely below the Schooling Resource Standard which is the accepted minimum
The growing gap was clearly set out in the evidence of Professor John Buchanan from the University of Sydney Business School.
