Victorian school students and parents are suffering because Vic Labor cannot manage anything. The report below includes details of 1,556 teaching and staff vacancies. The Vic government has no urgency to fill the positions because if it did so it would need to find at least $125 million to fund the vacancies. Treasurer Tim Pallas simply does not have the funds to do so.
This is a shocking state of affairs. Vic Labor has become a cancer on Victorian daily life.
Here are a couple of comments made by readers:
craig
Yet ANOTHER massive failure by this incompetent State Govt. Like the Hospital, Ambulance, Police and Health Systems failures, Danny Boy was told 8+ years ago what was happening and yet AGAIN failed to address the situation.. This is completely on this inept Govt. nobody else and they need to be held accountable..
Pipp2
How dare the Education Department, on behalf of a government that has been in power for more than ten years, brush of their abject failure to provide Victorian children with a decent education. What sort of defence to today’s critical shortages is the Education Departments regularly trotted out line – “the Victorian Government has invested more than xyz …” Has there been no department head during these ten years that’s estimated the number of children amongst the hundreds of thousands of immigrants coming into Victoria? Reviewed the number of teachers leaving the profession and do something substantial to counter this – improved wages and conditions, training etc? The department is a failure, and the government is a failure for not picking up on the flawed advice it has been fed.
This is what happens when net debt sits at $122 billion. The sad reality that voters need to understand is that Labor has budgetted for net debt to grow by another $67 billion to $189 billion in just another four years. Just imagine how even less money will be available to pay teachers.
Daniel Andrews, Jacinta Allan and Tim Pallas have ruined Victoria's finances. Victoria is broke.
The Labor cancer needs to be voted out.
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Victorian schools continue to grapple with chronic teacher shortages
Victoria’s education staffing shortage has reached new crisis levels with more than 1500 positions vacant, leading to some lessons being cancelled.
Suzan Delibasic and
Rebecca Borg Herald Sun
June 9, 2024 - 12:12PM
Victoria’s education staffing shortage has reached new crisis levels with more than 1500 positions vacant, leading to some lessons being cancelled.
Principals and teaching staff from state and independent schools have told the Herald Sun teacher shortages were “dire”, with fears the situation could worsen by the end of the year.
Recently, more than ten schools have addressed the issue in newsletters and emails to parents, saying they were “desperate” for staff and relying on casual relief teachers.
As of Saturday evening, there were 1556 teaching and education staff vacancies at over 400 Victorian government schools, with 771 jobs posted in the past week.
In a letter to families, St Ita’s Primary School in Drouin said if the school could not source teachers, it had “no option” but to split classes or close down a specialist class for the day.
Berwick Lodge Primary School principal Henry Grossek also told families in a recent newsletter that the school was facing “critical” teacher shortages.
“There are several ways that we are managing this shortage – including cancelling specialist programs and having specialist teachers take on class teaching for the grades that cannot be filled with CRTs when the class teacher is absent,” he said.
Mr Grossek told the Herald Sun his school was registered with two large casual relief teaching agencies, but still struggled to cover teacher absences on some days.
“This is term two, but term three is historically the most challenging term to get short term teachers and I’ve spoken with our agencies and they’re telling me that the situation isn’t going to get any better.
“Splitting and cancelling programs looks like it will continue throughout this year. The situation is truly dire.
“I think teachers deserve better conditions including fast-tracking EBA negotiations and better pay because it’s a crisis and these changes would signal to people out there that teaching is worth going into.”
A teacher, who works at a primary school in Melbourne’s east, said she was “extremely concerned” about the situation.
“It’s really only getting worse,” she said.
“There are some days when specialist classes are cancelled and it’s upsetting because the children are missing out on a quality education.
