Local Teaching Crisis - We Need More Teachers

24 June 2009

Shadow Minister for Education and Member for Murrumbidgee Adrian Piccoli has sought assistance from the NSW Minister for Education to ensure all school classes are appropriately staffed during teacher absences.

Griffith schools are finding it difficult to source casual staff to cover unsupervised classes, and Mr Piccoli said it was a situation occurring in many schools in rural NSW.

Mr Piccoli has also called on former local teachers to consider re-entering the workforce as casual teachers.

"Late last month, over a three day period, one local school had almost 40 classes which could not be run due to the unavailability of casual teachers.  More than half of these were HSC classes.

"The situation did not improve and the following week 60 classes had to be cancelled.

"Despite the best efforts of teachers we have a shortage of staff and that is causing some difficulties for the affected schools and students.

Mr Piccoli said the teacher shortage was being compounded by a lack of support for teachers prepared to take on temporary relief work in hard to staff areas.

"This does nothing to help the shortage of teachers our school communities are dealing with, and there needs to be a swift change of attitude if we are going to turn this situation around.

"The Department should be bending over backwards to keep teachers and staff, this is the only way we are going to avoid massive class disruptions that we have already seen too much on a local level," Mr Piccoli concluded.

Local former teachers interested in returning to work can visit the Teach NSW website at www.teach.nsw.edu.au for more information.