Speaker 1: My name is Lily Madden and I'm a proud Arunda
Speaker 1: Bunjelung Carguttin woman from Gadighl Country. The Daily oz acknowledges
Speaker 1: that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the
Speaker 1: Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres
Speaker 1: Strait Island and nations. We pay our respects to the
Speaker 1: first peoples of these countries, both past and present.
Speaker 2: Good morning and welcome to the Daily os. It's Friday,
Speaker 2: the third of November. I'm Sam, I'm Zara. A new
Speaker 2: government campaign is trying to inspire a new generation of teachers.
Speaker 1: Teaching really does give so much more back than you
Speaker 1: actually give out.
Speaker 2: But when we asked our TDA audience what they thought
Speaker 2: of it, the message came through loud and clear.
Speaker 3: The problem isn't attracting teachers. You've got enough teachers. It's
Speaker 3: retaining teachers.
Speaker 2: So will this campaign bring new teachers to the profession
Speaker 2: and is enough being done to stop them from leaving?
Speaker 2: We'll let you know in today's deep dive. But firs
Speaker 2: Ara Prime Minister Anthony Aberanzi's back on a plane tomorrow.
Speaker 4: He is this time he is off to China. And
Speaker 4: it's going to mark the first visit to China by
Speaker 4: an Australian PM since twenty sixteen. It's also fifty years
Speaker 4: since Scoff Whitlam became the first Australian Prime Minister to
Speaker 4: travel to China in nineteen seventy three. While there, Albinizi
Speaker 4: will meet with Chinese President Chi Jimping in Beijing for talks,
Speaker 4: and he'll also attend an international import exhibition in Shanghai.
Speaker 4: The four day visit comes after China scrapped financial penalties
Speaker 4: on several Australian imports in the last twelve months.
Speaker 2: The federal government will expand a specialist family violence hotline
Speaker 2: for First Nations boys and men. The Brother to Brother
Speaker 2: hotline provides twenty four to seven culturally safe support for
Speaker 2: males struggling with issues around relationships, parenting, and drug and
Speaker 2: alcohol use. It was previously only open to First Nations
Speaker 2: men aged eighteen to twenty five, but will now be
Speaker 2: accessible to boys as young as ten.
Speaker 4: Kmart has been fined one point three million dollars that's
Speaker 4: for breaching Australian spam laws. An investigation from the National
Speaker 4: Communications Regulator found that Kmart sent over two hundred thousand
Speaker 4: marketing emails to unsubscribed customers between July twenty twenty two
Speaker 4: and May twenty twenty three. The action from the national
Speaker 4: regulator follows similar measures against door Dash, Uber and Tickertech.
Speaker 2: And Today's Good News. Sorry just near sneeze, which wouldn't
Speaker 2: be an issue in Queensland, which is rolling out their
Speaker 2: free flu vaccine program for another year in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 4: The most painful dad joke You've ever made.
Speaker 2: It follows the successful vaccine rollout last year and this year,
Speaker 2: when almost one million people received a free jab. The
Speaker 2: measure is aimed at reducing pressure on the public health
Speaker 2: system and providing cost of living support. Let'd say gives
Speaker 2: it a bit of a jab in the arm Czara.
Speaker 2: The government has a new ad campaign to recruit more
Speaker 2: teachers and it's all about inspiration.
Speaker 5: Dear miss Luke, I just wanted to thank you for
Speaker 5: everything you have done for me. I was struggling pretty
Speaker 5: bad before you came to teach us. Not only do
Speaker 5: you look like one of my idols, you are one
Speaker 5: from Mila. It was just so potent, The fact that
Speaker 5: you can be someone's idol.
Speaker 4: Beautiful.
Speaker 2: Do you feel inspired after that, Zara.
Speaker 4: I mean, like, I think that it's preaching to the
Speaker 4: converted because I wanted to be a teacher when I
Speaker 4: finished school because I loved you. Yeah, I love my
Speaker 4: teachers so much that I wanted to be a teacher.
Speaker 2: But what we know from reporting on the teaching profession
Speaker 2: over the last couple of years is that it is
Speaker 2: going to take more than ad to get new teachers
Speaker 2: into the classroom and to keep them there. So we
Speaker 2: put this campaign in front of the TDA audience, and
Speaker 2: what we heard from teachers within tda's audience is that
Speaker 2: this isn't striking a chord.
Speaker 3: Oh, I'm a name's Katrina. I'm a former teacher who
Speaker 3: left the teacher profession about a decade ago.
Speaker 2: So Katrina is one of the people who commented on
Speaker 2: the post we put up earlier this week.
Speaker 3: When I heard about the Gosh government initiative to be
Speaker 3: that teacher, I thought, the problem isn't attracting teachers. You've
Speaker 3: got enough teachers. It's retaining teachers.
Speaker 2: And there were lots of comments like this. When we
Speaker 2: put the story on Instagram, there was stuff like, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm reading this with tears in my eyes as I
Speaker 2: know I will end up being a teacher who leaves
Speaker 2: the profession early. So I guess this initiative might be
Speaker 2: all about inspiring people to become teachers, but there's clearly
Speaker 2: a question to be asked here about what's being done
Speaker 2: to inspire teachers already teaching in classrooms.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I think that this goes to I mean,
Speaker 4: it won't be surprising to anyone that's listening who is
Speaker 4: in the teaching profession that there are some major issues
Speaker 4: in this industry exactly.
Speaker 2: And what that has led to is a teacher shortage.
Speaker 2: And to give you a sense of the situation, the
Speaker 2: federal government says it expects from twenty twenty one to
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five that Australia is going to have foury
Speaker 2: one hundred fewer teachers than we actually need. And there
Speaker 2: are two problems to consider here. On one hand, there's
Speaker 2: more students to teach. Student numbers are booming. It's growing
Speaker 2: at about ten percent a year Australia wide. It's pretty quick.
Speaker 2: And on the other hand, teaching numbers are falling and
Speaker 2: we don't have enough people entering teaching. So when we
Speaker 2: look at even people who have enrolled in a teaching degree,
Speaker 2: but then are completing their degree. The completion rate is
Speaker 2: falling by seventeen percent a year, so that's a pretty
Speaker 2: sharp drop off too. And we also have a big
Speaker 2: problem of people wanting to leave teaching. There was this
Speaker 2: Monash University study last year of more than two thousand
Speaker 2: teachers and fifty nine percent of them said that they
Speaker 2: were thinking about leaving the profession. So that's a pretty
Speaker 2: big problem.
Speaker 4: And so what is it about teaching that seems to
Speaker 4: be the issue here? Like why are we hearing these numbers,
Speaker 4: seeing these numbers? Why did our audience react owe strongly
Speaker 4: to this story?
Speaker 2: So we go to look at another survey to try
Speaker 2: and understand the answer to that question. There was a
Speaker 2: survey of three thousand teachers and the survey asked those
Speaker 2: who said they were thinking of leaving the profession to
Speaker 2: list their reasons why. And the number one reason in
Speaker 2: that survey, nominated by seventy one percent of teachers was
Speaker 2: a heavy workload. Number two at sixty eight percent work
Speaker 2: life balance, so a similar theme. And then at number
Speaker 2: three with sixty one percent, the stress and the impact
Speaker 2: on mental health. And it's fair to say this was
Speaker 2: a common theme for our audience too.
Speaker 3: This is what Katrina said, the excessive workload, teachers having
Speaker 3: to mark assessments, write reports, communicate with parents, have meetings
Speaker 3: or after school hours, having to work, we can having
Speaker 3: to go to school performances as Stedfords, do all the
Speaker 3: extracurricular activities on top of you know, preparing lessons. It's
Speaker 3: just I'm not working seven days a week.
Speaker 4: I feel like this is what comes up in every
Speaker 4: conversation I have with any friends in the profession, is
Speaker 4: that you know, from the outside, people think that teachers
Speaker 4: work nine to three, that you know, they get these
Speaker 4: very long school holidays, that it's somehow this very easy
Speaker 4: profession when there is so much being done outside of hours,
Speaker 4: and there's so much preparation and so much after hours,
Speaker 4: that you know, the workload just seems insurmountable for so many.
Speaker 4: Putting that aside for a second, were there any other
Speaker 4: reasons that teachers were giving as to why they were
Speaker 4: turning away from the profession.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a variety of other reasons. There's things like
Speaker 2: insufficient pay that was reported by thirty percent of respondents,
Speaker 2: twenty eight percent mentioned class sizes being too large, and
Speaker 2: twenty six percent said it was about challenges with student
Speaker 2: behavior on.
Speaker 3: The daily, dealing with students who firmly appease you, physically
Speaker 3: step into your own personal space and threaten you, walk
Speaker 3: out of classrooms, ignore you. It's actually so horrible and
Speaker 3: it wouldn't happen in any other workplace, but unfortunately it
Speaker 3: happens ouri within an educational setting.
Speaker 2: And so I guess the point that emerges here is
Speaker 2: that for different teachers, the problems are different, but there
Speaker 2: is this general feeling that the education system is in
Speaker 2: a state where it's going to need much more than
Speaker 2: a single ad campaign to get it back on track.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean pretty clear that there is an issue there.
Speaker 4: Perhaps one ad campaign won't solve at all. What is
Speaker 4: the government trying to do to address this teacher shortage?
Speaker 2: So last year federal, state, and territory government's got together
Speaker 2: to produce this plan to address the shortage. This is
Speaker 2: Federal Education Minister Jason Clair speaking after that meeting about
Speaker 2: the government's three key focuses.
Speaker 5: One, what are the.
Speaker 6: Things that we can do to encourage more people to
Speaker 6: become teachers? What sort of national coordinated action can we
Speaker 6: take on that front? Secondly, what can we do to
Speaker 6: prepare student teachers for the workforce they're about to enter.
Speaker 6: And thirdly, what do we do to keep the fantastic
Speaker 6: teachers that we already have.
Speaker 2: So governments are tackling this crisis in a number of ways,
Speaker 2: including improving teaching courses so that means more funding for
Speaker 2: university places and for scholarships, as well as reviewing how
Speaker 2: teaching is actually being taught at universities. There's an underlying
Speaker 2: commitment to addressing teacher workloads, so you know, reviews of
Speaker 2: looking into how to cut down on unnecessary work taken
Speaker 2: on by teachers, also by admin staff, things like report writing,
Speaker 2: unpaid extracurricular activities, and also ways to help teachers with
Speaker 2: lesson planning, so giving better resources to teachers to sit
Speaker 2: alongside the national curriculum. Now, it's worth mentioning that these
Speaker 2: are all quite theoretical so far. The Action Plan was
Speaker 2: released last December and it's really more of an aspirational
Speaker 2: guide for how governments want to approach the issue. But
Speaker 2: it is certainly recognition from all levels of government that
Speaker 2: there is a problem here. So Zara, having had this
Speaker 2: chat today and watching that campaign together, why did you
Speaker 2: want to go into teaching and has that changed.
Speaker 4: Look, I think the reason that I wanted to go
Speaker 4: into teaching was that I truly thought that I had
Speaker 4: an exceptional time at school and through my education system,
Speaker 4: and that I thought that I wanted to give other
Speaker 4: people the opportunity to have access to the type of
Speaker 4: you know, learning that I did and the type of
Speaker 4: teachers that I did. I think it is an incredibly,
Speaker 4: incredibly difficult career that is oftentimes glossed over and I
Speaker 4: think misunderstood, especially the workload that comes with it. And
Speaker 4: I certainly didn't appreciate that at school, let alone, you know,
Speaker 4: when I was considering what to study at university. I think,
Speaker 4: in a way, what we do now, in my mind,
Speaker 4: kind of ticks the box of teaching. I feel like
Speaker 4: I wanted to teach to be able to like start
Speaker 4: conversations with students in the way that my teachers did
Speaker 4: and the way they supported me. And I do feel like,
Speaker 4: hopefully through the daily ods, I do get that avenue,
Speaker 4: even if it's you know, not in a formal kind
Speaker 4: of classroom setting. And I do still think that there
Speaker 4: is an element of teaching that we're doing here, So just.
Speaker 2: A bit less marking though.
Speaker 4: A bit less, just comment sections and dms to deal with,
Speaker 4: so basically the same. But I think that, yeah, the
Speaker 4: essence is the same. And all I'd say is that
Speaker 4: I'm grateful for the amazing teachers I had. I know
Speaker 4: that one of them, Misstang, listens to this, so hello,
Speaker 4: and that yeah, we should always be grateful for our teachers,
Speaker 4: and especially for those who are heading into a career
Speaker 4: that you know, we know that there is a problem,
Speaker 4: but hopefully they can all be part of the change together.
Speaker 2: That's all we've got time for on today's episode of
Speaker 2: The Daily Odds. If you learn something from this episode,
Speaker 2: you can keep the conversation going. Maybe you've got a
Speaker 2: teacher in mind that you can send this to, or
Speaker 2: you can throw this link in your mate's group chat.
Speaker 2: We'll be back again on Monday morning. Have a great weekend.