So, if one listens to the news, one would be aware of a pending crisis in schools – a lack of teachers. Various pundits and government officials put the crisis at different points in the future. For example, the Commonwealth government projects a shortfall of more than 4,000 high school teachers by 2025, while NSW casts a need for an additional 3800 teachers to meet the demand by 2027. However, no matter when they say it will happen, there is a near consensus that a teacher shortage crisis is pending and inevitable. Some, like me, have been railing about the aging teacher population and an impending crisis for over a decade. According to the New South Wales Education Standards Authority (NESA), as of the end of 2018 (latest data available), 25% of the teaching population was over the age of 55; 35% were over the age of 50; and, the most significant proportion of teachers (~16%), were over the age of 60.
More recent data shows that between 2018 and 2020, the proportion of teachers aged 30 years or younger declined from 14.33 per cent to 12.2 per cent. At the same time, the balance of teachers aged 50 years or older rose from 35.7 per cent to 38.2 per cent.
The teacher shortage is compounded by the aging workforce, the Covid Pandemic and the worst flu season in 20 years. The covid isolation rules combined with illness from covid, vaccination mandates for teachers, a growing work-from-home culture, of which teachers are not a part, poor top pay, and some of the worst working conditions (outside of healthcare) for professionals.
In a national survey of 32,000 teachers, more than 20% plan to leave the profession before retirement and 86% of those cited “workload and coping” as their primary reason for wanting to leave. This disaster was exacerbated by a former NSW Education Minister who consistently told the university sector, and anyone else who would listen, that teachers were underperforming, universities were failing to train good teachers and that there was an oversupply of teachers despite any credible evidence. That minister’s policies led to an increase in standards to enter into teaching degrees and a backlash against the teaching profession that has lingering concerns for the numbers of prospective teachers and the quality of those candidates.
So, what solution does the Perrotet government propose – Performance Pay, but under a new guise? Why can’t we call it performance pay, you might ask? Because performance pay has been shown to be an ineffective mechanism in all the features the government is trying to improve. So the performance pay, which isn’t performance pay, will allocate “higher paid roles for outstanding teachers,” according to NSW Education Minister Sarah Mitchell, which obviously sounds like performance pay. But, she added, “This model is not ‘performance pay’, this is about expanding the career options for teachers and keeping our best in the classroom.” Still, these career options pay more, so it is essentially extra pay for performing well – but don’t call it performance pay!
What we know about performance pay, according to the OECD, is that it doesn’t work in places where teachers are paid relatively high salaries (Yes, Australian teachers are paid well in comparison). However, more generally, in this context, performance pay just isn’t a good idea. NSW is proposing paying Highly Accomplished or Lead Teachers (HALT), a program that has existed for more than 15 years, more money: up to $130,000/yr., which will create a new tier of teachers. Presumably, this new tier of highly accomplished and lead teachers will remain in the classroom as practitioners and…. Hmm, I don’t know if there is an ‘and’.
Salaries for NSW teachers start at $73,737 and go up in three tiers to just under $110,000 in about 7 to 8 years. Teachers can earn up to $117,000 if accredited as a HALT. And then there are additions given level of responsibilities, e.g. Assistant Principal, Deputy Principals etc. Historically, the best teachers would be selected as high performing and move on to non-teaching promotion-based administrative roles, such as Assistant and Deputy Principals. The problem with this and this new-ish scheme is the selection process. Presumably, highly effective teachers who were and are selected for these promotional roles were and are chosen based on merit, but the merit of what? Great teachers don’t necessarily make great principals, do they? More often than not, these selections were made based on anecdotes, friendliness in the staff room and a tap on the shoulder from the principal. Merit is an interesting concept when we think about teachers and teaching. Who decides which teachers are good and what teachers aren’t? Ask any mature-age teacher the last time they had someone senior to them observe their teaching to either evaluate them or to provide critical feedback. The answer would shock most other professions, but teachers know that no one ever observes our teaching. So, the question remains, how do we decide who the most effective teachers are?
The problem with the HALT system is that it doesn’t measure teacher effectiveness either, although it does include observation of teaching. It measures, at best, the ability of a teacher to document and analyse their practice against the Teaching Standards. The HALT program, which has been running since 2005, has had fewer than 200 teachers accredited at those levels, and only 50 of them are still working as classroom teachers, according to a new paper. Moreover, there have been flaws with the program since the beginning, with very few teachers seeing the need to be accredited at higher levels. So will a 15% pay rise do the trick? And even if it does, what does it mean for the profession? Will it attract new entrants? Will it help retain the most influential teachers in the classroom?
The more important question concerning this entire scheme is, are the HALT teachers the best and most influential teachers? What evidence does the NSW government have that this process identifies the best practitioners? I’m not opposed to a higher tier and higher salaries for the higher tier. Still, in a teacher workforce of more than 155,000 (in 2018), only 200-300 achieve accreditation at HALT status, and only 50 of those still in the classroom teaching does not sound like an evidence base that this scheme works.
What we need is an overhaul of the system. We need to start employing more teachers on full-time bases and stop casualising the workforce. Of course, we need to pay all teachers better, but more than increasing pay, we need to provide working conditions commensurate with the profession.
Here is what Australian teachers think of their profession:
- More than a third of teachers (34%) expressed dissatisfaction with their role as a teacher
- Teachers do not feel appreciated for the work that they do
- Teacher workload is an area of serious concern for teachers
- Workload concerns are influencing teachers’ intention to leave the profession
- Teachers would not recommend teaching as a career due to workload concerns
- Teachers are concerned about health, safety, and well-being, and impact on their decision to remain in the profession
- Teaching is a challenging profession.
- Attention to workload and well-being factors have the greatest impact on teacher retention, as well as attracting future teachers to the profession.
If policymakers read the evidence, they would see that while increasing pay might help, it is not the primary concern of most teachers. We need to change the conversation to how we make teaching a more tenable profession for those who want to be teachers.
Maximising Student Potential 