I don’t blame them but fuck this is scary.
Stressful training and work environment, long hours, and the pay isn’t that great either. This really is the government’s problem to solve - and it’s probably not going to be solved just by paying people once to complete their degree, it will have to be throughout their career by providing more pay and more support. Which of course means the public will eventually end up footing at least some of the bill - but the alternative, where education is compromised, will end up costing even more.
We are already seeing the result of this. This is the result of this.
I don’t want to disrespect teachers, but the really skilful teachers, with innate people-management skills ended up in the private sector, in high paying people-management roles.
This resulted in only the truly passionate teachers staying on the industry. These passionate teachers were easy pray for manipulative, trouble-making students, which forced more and more teachers out of the industry.
This has been a negative-feedback loop over the last 40 years. The only way to resolve the this is to (strategically) pump money into pulling people out of the private sector and back into teaching.
I am sure that there are thousands of people in middle management roles who would love to take on a teaching (or educational management) role with KPIs based on benefit to society, rather than benefit to the pay packet of the next manager up the org chart, as long as they had a decent wage.
Teacher of 20+ years checking in. Schools only continue in their current state because of the hard work and good will of education workers. It’s not an endless resource though. If governments keep ignoring problems in schools, they will collapse as people can’t afford to work there anymore because of the financial or mental health costs.
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Wage is exactly why I did not consider teaching. Grad salary for secondary ed in Chemistry or Mathematics in WA is 78k. That means you’ve completed enough chem or math units to complete a degree, and then done teaching on top. The grad salary on the mines is far higher, and with that much math you could go into the actuarial field and make 200k in a couple of years.
Why would I study an extra 1 or 2 years to be paid less?
(To be fair, I did none of the above. But it is why I didn’t go into teaching)
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Graduating high school students are continuing to turn away from teaching degrees in huge numbers, early application data shows, as concern grows over “unprecedented” workforce shortages.
The data, provided to Guardian Australia from the Universities Admissions Centre, showed education degrees received just 1,935 first preferences this year, a 19.24% decline compared with 2023 and the lowest rate since at least 2016, when public records became available.
She pointed to teaching degree fees and the burden of unpaid placements placing pressure on students amid a cost of living crisis.
Last week, the Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, announced students enrolled to become secondary school teachers would have their degrees paid by the state government, in an effort to fill “crippling” staff shortages in the sector.
Data from the Department of Education, Skills and Employment found across Australia annual commencements in ITE dropped by 8% between 2017 and 2020 and completions fell by 17%.
Former teacher and head of tutoring company Clever Cookie Academy, Peita Mages, said her top students were “not looking to teaching” after experiencing the workforce shortages first-hand.
The original article contains 679 words, the summary contains 178 words. Saved 74%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
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