The Nationals Member for Shepparton, Kim O’Keeffe, has labelled recent figures showing Victoria’s chronic teacher shortages as no surprise.
Ms O’Keeffe says these recent figures further show the Andrews Government is asleep at the wheel, and has no solutions to deal with the state’s ongoing teacher shortages.
She says of the 430 teachers and principals across the state who have been recently surveyed, 76 per cent say the additional workloads caused by staff shortages are
unsustainable.
“More than 73 per cent indicated these shortages were leading to burnout, and 63 per cent believe increased workloads are likely to cause colleagues to leave their profession early,” Ms O’Keeffe says.
“The shortages have become so bad, more than half of all public schools in Victoria have classroom teacher vacancies – and that means our children’s education is being disadvantaged and they are being left behind because of these chronic shortages,” she says.
Ms O’Keeffe added teachers, staff and school communities right across the Shepparton District are facing the ongoing challenges in trying to offset the chronic shortages without wrecking their own careers.
She says stressful shortages are having an alarming impact on principals, teachers and staff, who are all facing unsustainable workloads, experiencing extreme performance pressure and burnout, which, in some cases, is seeing many resign from their employment or take leave to escape the overload.
“Now is the time when we need the State Government to deliver on its promise and to govern for all Victorians. Now is the time we need to see the State Government make such investments to deal and combat these chronic teacher shortages across the state.
“Otherwise, we are only continuing to go backwards and not forwards. These results and figures that have been recently published, show the Andrews Government hasn’t tackled these shortages adequately and with the Government failing to get a pass mark running the education system, we are only risking losing more teachers,” Ms O’Keeffe added.
Ms O’Keeffe says this is a crisis which must have solutions to encourage, not discourage, teachers and future teachers to want to teach, educate and inspire our future generations, not in only regional Victoria but across the state.