Michelle Ananda-Rajah (Higgins, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Teachers do much more than teach. They have the power to transform lives. Like the warmth of the sun on a seedling, their attention and care turn children into scholars, sportspeople and creatives, or a touch of all three. I still remember my year 6 teacher. Her interest and encouragement were enough. Several decades later—several careers later—and now raising my own children, I am for teachers. There is no question that my most engaging visits, the ones that leave me with the broadest of smiles, are to my local schools. The children are balls of energy, curiosity and wisdom. 'From the mouths of babes' is the utterance. Not far, standing like sentinels, are their devoted teachers, skilfully marshalling the life force in children towards purpose and self-exploration. They make it look easy; however, the reality is very different.

Teachers are struggling. The past 10 years have seen a 16 per cent decline in school-leavers taking up teaching. With a 50 per cent completion rate, followed by 30 to 50 per cent leaving the profession within the first five years, the teaching pipeline is leaking. This degree of attrition has set off alarm bells. The drivers include excessive paperwork, unpaid work and mental health effects. 'Get the system off our backs,' said one experienced teacher. Another who left my electorate to work in a high-needs area that she grew up in—altruism runs high in the teaching profession—is now contemplating leaving the profession altogether. High needs among students, exhausted parents, disengagement and, in many cases, hostility from parents towards teachers are an all too pervasive problem.

AITSL found that only 40 per cent of teachers' time was spent in face-to-face teaching, completely back to front. How did we get to this point? Australia's teacher shortage has been 10 years in the making but, like other public facing professions, was exacerbated by the pandemic. Virtually overnight, teachers became IT experts, therapists and infotainment specialists while divided by screens. Back in the classroom, they had to contend with disengaged children who had fallen behind while battling repeated bouts of COVID. The Australian Education Union, at the parliamentary long-COVID inquiry that I held at Cabrini Hospital in my electorate, testified that five to six bouts of COVID and long COVID were not uncommon amongst teachers. My response was that this is completely unacceptable and it is one of the reasons I am chairing a clean air forum at parliament next week.

Parental pressure compounds teachers' stress, edging them closer to a tipping point. As a community, we need to recalibrate our expectations. A child's formal learning environment may be school, but what goes on at home is just as important. Teachers are not miracle workers. They are all doing the best they can under some pretty trying circumstances. I have seen what better looks like. Principal Sally Lasslett from Hester Hornbrook Academy, an independent school in Prahran for young people 15 to 25 years of age who have fallen through the cracks, does things differently. The school staff wellbeing program is an exemplar of what is needed to promote teacher retention. It includes mandatory debriefing with psychologists every fortnight, a flexible work model with four hours work from home each week and planning days and days off in lieu so that teachers are optimised to deal with the complexities facing their students. The power of teamwork runs strong in this institution, and their school awards ceremony was a joyous affair that screamed pride.

The Albanese government's National Teacher Workforce Action Plan sets out 27 recommendations to be actioned by the Commonwealth and subnational governments, with $159 million to train more teachers in early childhood, primary and secondary education, $56 million for scholarships worth $40,000 to encourage high achievers to become teachers and $68 million to triple the number of mid-career professionals that switch, like Andrew, an engineer I met in Malvern, who is retraining now to be a teacher. We are investing $20 million in professional development and in a campaign to promote teaching as a career. Importantly, $30 million will help trial new ways of reducing teachers' workloads.

The meaning of life is to find your gift; the purpose of life is to give that gift away, said Picasso. At present, our teachers are like miners toiling away under heat and pressure to unearth talent. In that future we are shaping, they will be seen as social engineers, driving social mobility through the most powerful tool there is: education.

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