David Hetherington 00:07

Hello, and welcome to Hands Up, a podcast by the Public Education Foundation that lifts the lid on everything going on in our public schools. I’m David Hetherington, the CEO of the foundation. You know all those burning questions you’ve had about what actually happens at your child’s school? Well, hands up, if you’ve ever wondered about the work of your child’s school teacher, and how they structure their day, their classroom time? And if they’ll even be there, the year from now?

Alice Leung 00:33

You know, we often joke that we don’t have time to even go to the toilet or, or drink water. And that’s a typical day. A lot of teachers feel like they don’t have the time to teach well.

David Hetherington 00:43

Teachers groan at the common misconception that their job is one of the easiest out there with early knockoffs, relaxing weekends and long holidays. The reality is very different. Most teachers work nights, weekends and through the school holidays to do lesson planning and catch up on the increasing volume of administrative tasks they’re now expected to do. But wages for teachers haven’t gone up in proportion to this extra workload. The recent teacher strikes under the slogan of ‘More Than Thanks’, brought some of these issues into the public consciousness. But, what does this mean for the future of teaching? Why are both experienced and new teachers leaving the profession in droves? How can we attract smart, creative and enthusiastic people to teaching and what to do about the endless admin?

Alice Leung 01:30

My name is Alice Leung, I’m the head teacher secondary studies at Concord High School. I teach year 7 Science, year 7 Maths and year 12 Chemistry this year. So, I came in at about like 7:45, umm and just sorted out what I needed to do for today, which was like just responding to emails… setting up all of the Google Classroom posts for all of my lessons… the worksheets we give out it’s got a digital version… because our technology support officer’s on leave this week, I just had to arrange different people to take his place….revise on our online NAPLAN procedures, so that starts tomorrow…. liaise with the lab assistant on some pracs that we are running… And then I had my year 12 chemistry class. So that was, that was the first one. After that I had my year 7 Maths class. Luckily that demountable classroom was a few steps away from my year 12 Chemistry demountable so I could just sort of walk there…. Then it was recess and I just had a few phone calls to make… I did some marking after that. So my year sevens have homework… I had to sign a whole bunch of purchase orders, library stationery orders for the library…. This is before lunch. So today’s timetable, allows me to eat lunch tomorrow won’t be, like you’re eating and you’re doing other stuff… After lunch we had a Workplace Health and Safety Committee meeting. Ummm yeah. And then I had the last lesson as a planning period just to get ready for for the next day. But today’s a good day. (Laughing.) It’s Monday today Alice you’ve got four more of these to go. It’s Monday, (laughing…)

David Hetherington 03:10

Alice, one of the things we, we’ve heard in speaking to teachers is that one of the, one of the changes over recent years has been the change in the kind of administrative load or the reporting load or the data collection load that teachers face that the teachers are asked to kind of undertake on behalf of the system, if you like, can you tell us a little bit about that and how that might affect you or other teachers at the school.

Alice Leung 03:33

In terms of data collection, it has definitely increased. So even some of the new initiatives that have sort of come in in the past year or so. So there’s a check in assessment, there’s the Best Start at year seven. There is of course NAPLAN there is year 10 minimum standards. Yes, these things are all good, but they’re added on, and nothing is removed. An authentic task that has like authentic, authentic activity or an authentic sort of data collection process, umm just becomes, I guess, a compliance task. So when you have that all the data is now there. But then do we actually have time to look at that data meaningfully? Or is it just sitting there in an online system with just percentages and no one is using it? Yeah, the underlying intent is great, but without the time and resources to execute it properly. It becomes a meaningless task.

David Hetherington 04:29

You mentioned the teacher shortages. Can you talk a little bit about how those shortages are playing out? Both, you know within your school, perhaps but across the education spectrum?

Alice Leung 04:40

If your school is at Bondi or if your school is at Broken Hill, you’re experiencing a teacher shortage. There’s a casual teacher shortage. So in terms of the day to day cover of classes when a teacher is absent for whatever reason or they’re on professional learning, there’s now a very minimum number of casual teachers that you can find to cover those classes. Some subject areas experience more difficulty than others. So, in most of the schools that I’ve worked in it is the technologies key learning area that has struggled a lot. So things like umm, wood technology, metal technology, software design and development, food technology, hospitality. It’s a subject that kids love, they love that hands-on subject, they love the design process. But you need expertise to to run it. And their classes are smaller because of that practical component. So they do need more teachers. So it seems like we’re just sort of just plugging holes, and not really looking at it from a whole system’s perspective. I know a few colleagues who umm who just have stopped teaching, because…

David Hetherington 05:43

Why, what are the things that drive people to leave the profession?

Alice Leung 05:47

They love teaching, they love being in the classroom, they love working with colleagues, and I think it’s all of the other stuff that they’re expected to do, just removes the joy of teaching from them. No teacher goes into the profession, because they want to be a billionaire, they want to be Elon Musk, and no one does that. But they still want to be able to not struggle financially, they still want to be able to, to afford to get into the property market, in where they live, they want to be able to afford to start a family. And I don’t think those things are there for our younger teachers. And they’ll go you know what, I actually can’t stay in this profession, I’m getting paid less like less than my peers. And I’m expected to do more. So I’ve actually have a colleague who transitioned to teaching from another career. Umm she was an engineer. And she was saying to me, I worked a lot less, and I got paid a lot more as an engineer. You know, we often joke that we don’t have time to even go to the toilet or drink water. And that’s a typical day. Umm, And I think because a lot of teachers feel like, they don’t have the time to teach well, so teachers like to teach well. They want to do the job well. And when they feel like they’re just rushing, and not having the time and resources to design lessons properly, or to mark students work properly, or to interact with students properly, to build relationships with them. They’re like, this is not what I signed up for, like I signed up for being able to, like, you know, to make an impact on the next generation. This is not making an impact it’s just dishing out online assessments. That’s not what I signed up for. And I think that’s what’s driving them away.

David Hetherington 07:28

Alice, you spoke there about taking work home. Umm, you’re a little bit of a celebrity in the world of education Twitter. And I watch your feed and I see that, you know, oftentimes late in the evening, Saturday, Sundays, you are developing lessons, you know, planning lessons is that something that’s common for you and for the profession?

Alice Leung 07:47

It is very common, it’s very common for teachers to be carrying work home. And teachers just never walk in with just like their purse or backpack it’s always like shopping bags of student work that we are just like ferrying home every night and bringing it back to school. So, all of those things, you actually, you actually don’t have enough hours during work to, to do that. So a lot of teachers will come in at like 7:30am. So we’re not even coming in at nine, we’re coming in at 7:30, sometimes seven, we’re staying till 4:30 – 5 o’clock, we don’t really have breaks, we working all the way through and it’s still not enough time. You still end up taking work home or planning lessons at home, marking assessments at home, writing reports at home. So basically like the core of your work can’t be done at work.

David Hetherington 08:41

How to parents and carers play into this debate about teaching? What can what can parents and carers do at home or in the community to support teachers in their desire to corral more time and more resources for their for their children’s learning?

Alice Leung 08:58

I think parents and carers already a lot of them are very supportive. So I know with my own school was P&C, they have a very deep understanding of school funding, and also on teacher pay and teacher workload and the impacts of the teacher shortage on their children’s learning. So they know that their children have had merged classes or classes placed on the minimum supervision. Our parents have been very active in the ‘More than Thanks’ campaign. So they know the website, they understand that the nature of teaching has changed, that the work of teachers and the work of teaching is not what it was like 10 years ago, or 20 years ago, or even five years ago that it’s now a lot more complex. And there’s a lot more demands of teachers, by society and from the community, that when the work has changed, the resourcing needs to change. We can’t have um, resourcing like for high school teachers, the working conditions that teachers are at now are from the 1950s and teaching has changed a lot since then. I think parents by speaking to their teachers, umm and being I guess active in the ‘More than Thanks’ campaign will be able to get the best outcomes for their children.

David Hetherington 10:11

Alice Leung you’re an inspiring educator and it’s been a delight to spend some time at Concord High School with you. Thanks very much for joining us.

Alice Leung 10:18

Thank you.

David Hetherington 10:21

That’s Alice Leung, a head teacher from Concord High School in Sydney’s Inner West. The issues that Alice raised about growing demands and expectations and the pressures of staffing don’t come as a shock to our next guest who is a leader in this space, Lila Mularcyck. Lulu holds a range of roles at the New South Wales Department of Education, and also manages professional learning for teachers at the University of New South Wales Gonski Institute for Education.

Lila Mularczyk 10:45

My name is Lila Mularczyk, I have had the privilege of working 40 years in schools, around schools and for schools. I spent 15 years as a principal at Merrylands High School. I was president of the Secondary Principals Council, I was Director of New South Wales Secondary Education. And then I thought I’d move into the post retirement stage of my life, where I have about 15 different roles. I work for the Department still, I work in multiple universities, and I do professional learning for the profession, etc.

David Hetherington 11:18

Lila, thanks so much for joining us today. And I guess I’d like to start by asking, how has the day to day working life of a teacher changed over that time?

Lila Mularczyk 11:27

Well if I may just re-emphasise, I’ve been in the profession for 40 years, and at this point, I have never seen, I have never seen my school colleagues, school leaders and teachers so fatigued, demoralised, feeling less supported with appropriate support, or feeling less empowered than they do right now. And part of the reason is that the requirements of day to day work in a school seems to have moved from teaching and learning and the well-being of our students in school, but also the well-being of our staff, to a regime of targets and testing. The number of tools, multiple tools that I see school leaders having to populate on any given day with data, many times repeated data, many times repeated data on the same day, is so incredible. And it is that intensification of workload that is causing so much distress and tension in the provision of quality education for every child.

David Hetherington 12:40

I guess for a casual observer of schools and the public education system. It might be tempting to say we’ve had two years of a pandemic and of course, teachers are under stress and schools are under stress, because they’ve had to adapt to, to a very different environment. But it sounds like what you’re saying is, is there are causes deeper than that, that predate the pandemic? Umm is that the case?

Lila Mularczyk 13:02

I think, David, that’s absolutely true. So if we could start from decades ago, schools, students and school teachers and school leaders were the center of our system. And outside of that was the support mechanisms. It now appears to be that that has been quite flipped, that there is a strong population of outside support, and not necessarily the support that school leaders and teachers feel that they need to inform teaching and learning. But it is about requirements. It is about compliance training. It is about data harvesting. So it’s this busy work that it’s distracting our skilled and expert educators from their core work, which is every child, every child in every school in every context. Teachers go into the profession to look after the children in front of them or the young people in front of them. They don’t go in to be the administration officer who inputs data and that is part of the workload intensification.

David Hetherington 14:11

So Lila what are the alarm bells that you look out for? Can you give us some examples of the kind of things you’re seeing and hearing that trigger red flags for you, if you like? That tell you that, that this is a system under stress, and that there are both issues of well-being with with teachers, but but also consequential costs for for students?

Lila Mularczyk 14:30

Tears are the first things that come to mind and you may hear that in my voice. I work with a number of colleagues who are also many of them are friends. I work in different school clusters across New South Wales and I have never seen my colleagues so distressed that they can’t do the work that they want to do because of this. I have people who phone to debrief and keep in confidence how they’re feeling. I have already been in contact with several colleagues slash friends this morning, the stress is there for them. Absolutely. But you also see that they are asking for help, how can I prioritise what I need to do? And always at the top, I need to do this for the students, I need to do this for my teaching colleagues. But I am required to do and they will rattle off a list of 5, 10 different requirements they will have for that one week that they are entering. And it is certainly taking away emotionally, time strength, resilience, I see many red flags, I see colleagues asking, “where can I get additional support to complete some of this work?” It is just stretching and stretching what human beings who were trained and skilled and expert in one particular area, and now having to blend across a whole lot of areas that they were not necessarily trained for nor expected. And we are losing people to our system, especially the young teachers in our system within the first six years.

David Hetherington 16:10

So you mentioned there, Lila, that colleagues are asking what is the point of all this additional workload of this kind of data capture, data reporting? What’s your view on that? Why do you think this workload is needed is, is required?

Lila Mularczyk 16:26

I think the government requires from our system, some numbers. If we use attendance as an example, there were times when the system was requiring maybe once or twice a day data input around attendance alone. If you then look at Target and Testing regime, and I think, but I do believe on being quite accurate when I say that there are approximately 22+ statewide testing mechanisms now in place for students across the system. That certainly hasn’t been in play 10 years ago.

David Hetherington 17:08

And do you think governments do this because they believe citizens, voters have a need for, you know, simple metrics and simple scores to be relayed back to them as to how our school systems going? Do you think that’s why they do it? And if you gave parents a choice, would you rather your student have more face time with their teacher? Or would you rather they spend their time capturing all this kind of information around attendance and the 22 test systems? My basic guess would be that parents would rather teach or spend time with kids?

Lila Mularczyk 17:43

I would absolutely agree with that. I mean, we reporting back to parents about their child’s progress is really, really important.

David Hetherington 17:50

Of course.

Lila Mularczyk 17:51

But the harvesting of the data that is required, is actually not going to paint any more enhanced or deep understanding of the learning, rather than face to face with a child, face to face with the parent or parent groups. That is ultimately really important. I am yet to see any government released information about data that is helpful or healthy, or informing to the broader public, in terms of parents understanding the teaching and learning aspect. And we are there, educators at there, foremost as are parents by the way, foremost for the well-being and the progress of their child in school.

David Hetherington 18:34

I remember the policy environment that led up to the introduction of a lot of these kind of standards, you know, My School, NAPLAN, this idea that if you collected and published information about any system, we had Fuelwatch, we had Grocerywatch, but but in the case of schools, it was it was My School and similar, that it would somehow give parents better information around choice. As I think about it, though, and as I reflect on my own experience, I think what parents value much more is the kind of anecdotal feedback of what happens in and around a school community. And if you’re looking at your, your child’s future and how their education is going to unfold, it’s what you hear on the margins from, from others in the community that I think really influence your, your view, probably more than what you’ll find on a government website. That’s a personal reflection, but but I don’t know if it gels with?

Lila Mularczyk 19:29

Absolutely, that resonates so strongly, David. I’m sure that parents would rather hear about how was David going? Or how was Lila going rather than hearing right across the board, that there’s an issue with year 9 boys in New South Wales or in South Australia or whatever, on their writing. That doesn’t change or help David or his friends.

David Hetherington 19:52

I’d like to come back to something you touched on a moment ago, which was new teachers, young teachers entering the profession. You know, I’m aware of the research that says we have a shortfall. We’re going to have increasing numbers of enrolments. And we are struggling to both retain teachers in the profession, but to attract new teachers coming out of university. Can I ask you to comment on what that says about the social standing of teaching as a profession? Has the public debate moved on how we value teachers and if we kind of lost sight of the, of the foundational role they play in teaching and learning?

Lila Mularczyk 20:29

Once again, in my short, first 40 years in education, I have seen change in the way teachers are regarded socially. I must say that during the pandemic, it was heartening for most teachers to see and feel parents acknowledging the complexity of teaching when students were learning from home. That was wonderful. I don’t know that it’s retained traction in public discourse. That is certainly something to keep reminding people. But in terms of young teachers, they’re really uncompetitive salaries, entering teaching and as you progress, there is some progression, but it’s still uncompetitive compared to…

David Hetherington 21:11

I think it’s particularly hard in the big cities in Australia where, where housing costs are stratospheric umm so…

Lila Mularczyk 21:18

And equally in rural areas for similar reasons, in terms of living areas. But the workload is a surprise to so many teachers that are entering the profession. So I do, again, have the privilege of mentoring some teachers in their first five years and what I hear constantly, “I did not realize how much work was entailed in the work of teaching. I didn’t know how much teachers actually did”. And they will just run off a whole lot of roles that we have all taken for granted, that there was no understanding and that has quite shocked them. And you know, with the salaries with the hours, you know, 55 plus for a young person in their first year, and they speak about how tired and exhausted they are. We are losing people to our system, especially the young young teachers in our system within the first six years.

David Hetherington 22:17

I’d like to turn to the perspective of, of the families now, because families observe all of this happening from outside the school gate. How can families best respond to this, this crisis in teaching, as you’re describing it? You know, are there ways that they can support or advocate for their school either out there in the community? Or even in terms of individual feedback and response to teachers who are under pressure?

Lila Mularczyk 22:44

How can parents support? I mean, they can speak to their local members, if they choose to, be part of and it could be the P and C at the school level or any other parent forum, come to the school, be involved in it. You don’t have to speak for the, at all, but you certainly can be listening or contribute to it. Be part of that understanding as well. In multicultural communities, people will spread the word to their broader community as well. And David, may we also acknowledge that parents know more about their child than we ever will. That’s why the conversations are important.

David Hetherington 23:20

Lila Mularczyk your, your passion absolutely shines through. It’s been a real privilege, umm hearing your journey, and watching and listening to the care that you clearly hold for your colleagues and for public education as a whole. So thank you for joining us.

Lila Mularczyk 23:35

Thank you, David.

Teachers Strike Protest 23:36

(Chanting) More than Thanks! More than Thanks! More than Thanks! More than Thanks! More than Thanks! More than Thanks! More than Thanks! More than Thanks! More than Thanks!

Angelo Gavrielatos 23:52

We’re here, We’re here because we can’t accept the crippling teacher shortages, costing our kids opportunities to learn and more importantly, costing them their future.

Teacher 1 24:06

I’ve been fighting for the working conditions of teachers, the learning conditions of students and our wages for 40 years. Nothing has changed. No government has ever come and said to us, gee, you’re doing a good job. We’re gonna give you a pay increase.

Teacher 2 24:19

The workload in the last nine years has increased so significantly. I’m watching a lot of early career teachers begin to burnout and question what they’re doing in this profession.

Teacher 3 24:29

The future of teaching is not, is not something that I’m excited about.

Teacher 4 24:33

Oh mate, the future of education is exhausting. I’ve spoken to a lot of colleagues who themselves already are really despondent and really broken down about the plight of teachers and of public education.

Teacher 1 24:45

Something needs to change. I’m one one of the 70% who are considering their future in education, and I’m devastated that I have to start thinking about this.

Teacher 6 24:56

I was actually on the drive home on Monday thinking I don’t know if I can do this forever at this current rate.

Teacher 7 25:00

The future is definitely going to be a challenge.

Teacher 2 25:03

Yeah, I’ve been questioning whether or not I want to keep doing this job every week. The workload is so crippling I, my weekends are spent doing work, my nights are spent doing work, I’m at work, usually an hour and a half to two hours before work begins just to make sure that I’m on top of things. It’s hard. And it’s stressful.

Teacher 8 25:22

So you asked me what’s going to happen to young teachers coming in when they have to deal with that sort of crazy?They’re not going to stay, you can go and earn much better dollars with the skills we have doing something else.

Teachers Strike Protest 25:33

(Chanting) Shame, Shame, Shame…

Angelo Gavrielatos 25:34

The simple truth is, we don’t pay teachers what they’re worth. And if we don’t address the crippling workloads, we will not retain or attract the teachers we know we need. (Cheering)

David Hetherington 25:54

These are just a few of the thousands of teachers who went on strike across New South Wales in early 2022 and took part in the ‘More than Thanks’ rally in Sydney, organised by the New South Wales Teachers Federation. So how do we fix some of these challenges? How do we make teaching an attractive profession for our brightest university graduates? And how do we retain our best teachers? Some of the answers to these questions can be found in the Gallop inquiry, which recommended increasing teachers preparation time outside the classroom, lifting salaries to recognise greater workloads, and adding to the number of school counselors. The report was released in 2021, following an inquiry chaired by Emeritus Professor Geoff Gallop.

Geoff Gallop 26:34

I’m Geoff Gallop, I was involved in Western Australian State Politics for 20 years. And for a few of those years, I was Minister for Education in Western Australia. I went on to become the Premier from 2001 to 2006. When I left that position, I took up a professorship at Sydney University. And on retirement, they accorded me the honor of being an Emeritus Professor. And in that capacity as a retired academic, retired politician, I was asked to do a report on education along with Patrick Lee and Tricia Kavanagh on behalf of the New South Wales Teachers Federation.

David Hetherington 27:13

So if you go back, you know, over decades and generations, they’d typically been a major review of teaching roughly once a decade, in the context of setting pay and conditions. There hadn’t been one, in this instance, for 17 years, so that’s quite a long time. Were you surprised by what your inquiry uncovered?

Geoff Gallop 27:31

Well, there’s no doubt that when you looked at the old system, the 1970s, the 1980s, the 1990s, and then the early part of the 21st Century, uh there had been a real effort to make sure that teachers wages and conditions were appropriate to the times. And in 2003, we had such a wage value inquiry, and it led to very significant increases, but nothing has happened since then. And so I guess at one level, I wasn’t surprised that there were all sorts of issues that weren’t being addressed, because the history of New South Wales showed that you needed a wage value inquiry every 10 years to keep it up to scratch. And the last one was in 2003. So we’re going back a long time. And in the case of New South Wales, you know, the government had pulled out of a lot of its commitment to government education. So, I really wasn’t surprised that there were issues there.

David Hetherington 28:23

As you mentioned in your introduction, you’d spent time previously as a Minister for Education, and as a Premier and in those roles, you would have seen up close how a state school system works. How has teaching changed, in your view, from from your time in government in the 90s, in the early 2000s, to where we sit in the early 2020-2022? And teachers are facing a very different landscape?

Geoff Gallop 28:50

Well, I think the society in which we live has changed. And of course, that’s impacted upon teaching a lot more pressure, a lot more disruption. As we know, there’s many issues related to mental health and illness in our community today, and these things reflect back into the classroom. So I think there’s been those important social changes. Economically, I think there’s been a very, very strong push towards competition as being the governing ideal. And if you’re not up to it, we’ll you know, bad luck. And of course, again, that impacts, on, on, on the education system in terms of the values that the government brings to its expenditure, and its priorities and whatever. And then finally, of course, we’ve seen this revolution in thinking about education, converting it from the mission to educate people to some sort of choice phenomenon, where you simply choose the school you want to go to. There’s not so much emphasis on education in that system.

David Hetherington 29:48

So in some of the recent debate, it’s reported that we’re facing a teaching crisis. Is that an overstatement? Or does that sit with what you observed in the inquiry?

Geoff Gallop 29:59

Well, I suppose… it’s an interesting question about the use of the word crisis. I mean, when do we use it? And probably in journalistic commentary, it’s used too much. But when, when a crisis is a crisis, I think is when you can’t fill the numbers that are needed in your schools, and you have a shortage of teachers, and it’s getting worse. And some kids miss out on particular lessons, that really indicates that we have a crisis. Behind all of that is what we need to examine and explore and find out why it is that we’ve got that shortage of teachers. But I think that that, to me is what I’d call a crisis because it can’t continue. And something has to be.. there, there has to be money injected into this teacher salary and conditions to reverse the, the trend that we’ve seen in recent decades.

David Hetherington 30:45

So the big question, of course, is, what are the factors contributing to this crisis? The headline factor is often pay and keeping teachers levels of pay up to levels of the rest of the community. But of course, it’s more than that, too. Can you talk about some of the conditions that teachers are facing in terms of overcrowding or time available to prep? umm classes?

Geoff Gallop 31:10

Well, let’s start with the pressures that are coming from governments and governments are changing curriculum a lot. And that needs to be followed up with proper training for teachers into that process. They’ve changed the management system of education here in New South Wales, with ‘Local Schools Local Decisions’, and a lot of trauma attached to that because…

David Hetherington 31:32

For those listening ‘Local Schools Local Decisions’ is a policy, whereby much more of the decision making and the resources are devolved to individual schools, which, of course, gives a lot more local autonomy, but also adds to workload.

Geoff Gallop 31:46

Yeah, correct. That’s a perfect summary, I think the, the nature of parental expectation has been lifted a lot. They want the whole education system devoted to their children. And so there’s a lot more pressure for individualised learning. And, of course, that, that requires real planning and real effort. And yet, at the same time, teachers are being swamped with administrative chores and administrative requirements that make it hard for them to put in the time to be able to deliver that individualised learning. So there’s, there’s government factors, there’s social factors. And you know, I think there are parental factors that are involved in this enormous pressure. And it was our conclusion that the the amount of change that was going on, both in terms of the hours of work that were involved in teaching, and the intensification of that work was worse than it had been in any of those previous decades, when there were increases of salary that came through in the 70s, 80s, 90s and early 2000s.

David Hetherington 32:46

Another thing I want to ask you about Geoff, is preparation time. So my understanding is that teachers in the public system currently get two hours per week outside of the classroom that is paid for them to prepare their weekly, their weekly lessons, their weekly work. But that might not have changed for high school teachers since the 1950s. Is the increasing demands of preparation time, something that that recurred in your hearings?

Geoff Gallop 33:10

Look, there’s no doubt that the load on teachers now is such that they need extra hours to plan their lessons. And and put this into context. No major change in the hours for planning for secondary schools since the 1950s, and none for primary schools since the 1980s. I mean, that that’s tells you a lot that very statistic. And I’m not surprised that that recommendation on our report to increase the hours has been taken up by the Union in their campaign to improve conditions for teachers.

David Hetherington 33:39

So, so the report has a number of recommendations. I don’t propose we step through them one by one here. But having, having heard the profession, having reflected on what you’ve heard and written a very comprehensive report, if you could have one ask of government? If there was one change one reform you could put to government, what would it be?

Geoff Gallop 34:00

I looked I think the wages issue has to be addressed. As you know, there’s a shortage of labour in many, many parts of the economy. Employers are having to increase wages to get people into their job. And in some cases, in the professions, they’re significant increases. But in teaching, they’re just, it’s a blind spot. You can’t have a major profession like teaching being paid less than equivalent professions. When people go into study, they’re looking at the options. They might be attracted initially, but you’ve got to sustain them, you’ve got to make sure they’re retained in the system. So I think, really, the community as a whole acting through the government should send a message out, we’re going to improve the salaries of teachers, we’re going to bring them into a proper relationship with the rest of the economy, particularly the professional groups in the economy and start turning this big ship around. It’s not the end of everything, but I think it is an important and necessary beginning to get those increases in place.

David Hetherington 34:58

So how do we shift the public debate around this? It strikes me that one of the factors at play here is, kind of, the social standing of teaching, and the status and esteem in which teachers are held. And, and you often hear anecdotally from, from other countries that teaching is a calling that’s held in very high regard. And I worry that, you know, over time in Australia, that might have been something that slipped? Do you have any reflections on that? Is that is that consistent with what you see and hear? And if so, how do we change it?

Geoff Gallop 35:31

It is interesting that, that when the COVID crisis emerged and teachers were called on to deliver education in a different way, and families were obliged to get involved as well, in the process, they worked out how difficult it was. And I think they’d been for many, I think, for over a decade now, a pretty concerted assault on teachers, and what they represented in our system. And that’s really bad for your society.

David Hetherington 35:58

This is almost getting into cultural wars, stuff…

Geoff Gallop 35:59

Well, it was it was very much into culture war, I think. And, and, of course, the teachers have their union, and a lot of those people were anti-union, the teacher, the teachers union didn’t just interest itself in, you know, the wages issue, though they took an interest in education and how you do it, and that annoyed some people, as well. So there’s no doubt that that concerted campaign undermining the reputation of teachers, I must say, really disturbs me. But in the COVID thing, I think we saw a turn around. So should, should the government really have a strategy now to improve the wages and conditions and deal with some of those questions that I’ve talked about here today, along with the necessary improvement, we could start turning this around. But it requires, I think, a lot of people to remove the prejudice that they’ve currently got in their heads about teaching. A lot of parents have got rid of that prejudice now that we’ve had COVID. But it’s still there, as we’ve seen with some of the commentary on the curriculum, for example, that we can’t trust the teachers, we’ve got to tell them what they’ve got to do, and hold them to quite specific accountability on those issues. You know, if we want educated people, we’ve got to underpin our system with the notion of education. And its links to freedom, its links to critical thinking, all of those sorts of things. The reason we do all this, the reason we maintain this, this, you know, large, sophisticated public education system is to offer children the opportunity for a better life. And I think it’s something that gets lost a little bit in all of the detail that we, that we have this system, we’ve got to nurture, we’ve got to invest in because it is the engine… See our report was focused really on on, you know, the wages and conditions issue in comparison with other sectors. But the equally important question that links to that is equality of opportunity, and equality of outcomes. And at the moment, there’s a big gap in our learning outcomes between those who are well heeled to start with, and, you know, go into schools with a lot of resources in it. And the government system where its capacity to educate is there. But the pressures of the environment of many of the students that come into the system, are such that, you know, we haven’t achieved the breakthrough yet, which is to break that connection between your background and your educational level. So, I, I increasingly thought, let’s look at the issue of indigenous health and we’ve got the Closing the Gap. Now, you know, in education, we should have a similar policy, closing the gap. Closing the gap between the educational outcomes of some and the educational outcomes of others. And should we get those at the lower end up, that’d probably would have a much greater impact on our overall performance as a nation than to you know, marginally shift, those who are already at the top that little extra because they get an extra swimming pool or something in their school. So I think Closing the Gap ought to be our philosophy in education. It’s not just a case of excellence. It’s excellence and equity. And I think if you just go for one without the other, either you go for equity without excellence, you go for excellence without equity, I think, but you need both.

David Hetherington 39:10

Geoff, I think that’s an inspiring note on which to end. Thank you for the work you’ve done in reviewing the profession and for the work you continue to do in championing these causes. It’s been a pleasure to talk today.

Geoff Gallop 39:21

Thanks very much.

David Hetherington 39:22

That was Geoff Gallop, who led the 2021 independent inquiry into the current status of teaching and the outlook for the profession. Before him, I spoke to Lila Mularczyk from the University of New South Wales Gonski Institute for Education, and Alice Leung, a head teacher from Concord High School in Sydney. We also heard from some teachers who attended the more than thanks rally in Sydney earlier this year. My name is David Hetherington, and you’ve been listening to Hands Up, a podcast from the Public Education Foundation that answers all your burning questions about public schools. For more information about the work of the Foundation in supporting young people with scholarships and advocating for a high quality well resourced public school system, go to our website, which is publiceducationfoundation.org.au. We’ll put a link to the Gallop Inquiry Report and Alice Leung’s Twitter handle in our podcast show notes, Alice is a bit of a rockstar in the education space on Twitter. Hands Up was produced by Jennifer Macey and Olivia Roseman with editing by Holly Forrest, and Louise Osborne, who created the More than Thanks montage. Sound engineering by Jason Nicholas and research by Melanie Morrison. We’d like to acknowledge our former colleague Jannine Miguez Shaw, who was a source of inspiration for this podcast. Thank you to the New South Wales Teachers Federation for their support, and for allowing us to record in this excellent podcasting studio. A big shout out to the students and staff in the instrumental music program at Fort Street High School in Sydney for composing, performing and arranging our wonderful theme music. This podcast was produced on the land of the Gadigal people of the Eora nation, the first and original teachers and knowledge holders of this land. Thanks so much for listening.