education workforce Archives

Teachers say it’s crazy now. That’s not even the whole story

The crisis facing teachers and the teaching profession over the last decade at an international level is well-established in both the academic literature and industry reports.

Borne by compliance-driven and bureaucratic policies that have heightened accountability and scrutiny over teachers’ work, a large body of evidence has documented the negative impacts felt by teachers resulting from these policies. This includes excessive workloads and intensification of work, elevated stress and burnout, and diminished health and wellbeing. Flatlining salaries and poor professional respect have also culminated to create a disincentive to enter into the profession.

These pressures have contributed to a growing teacher shortage internationally. The situation is so dire the United Nations (UN) has recently recommended an urgent call to action to transform education systems and the teaching profession globally.

The UN described the COVID-19 pandemic as having “turned the world of work upside down”. On top of the pressures experienced pre-pandemic, it is crucial to understand how the work of teachers changed post-pandemic. In a recently published article, we explored the legacy impact of the pandemic on school teachers’ work.

COVID-19: Disrupting a profession in crisis

Teachers’ work changed fundamentally due to COVID. In a matter of weeks following the World Health Organization declaring a worldwide pandemic in early 2020, governments began directing schools to shut down and shift to remote teaching and learning of students.

This experience of remote learning for teachers was fairly short-lived, particularly compared to other sectors where working-from-home has increased and sustained beyond pre-pandemic levels. But empirical studies in Australia and internationally documented the significant disruption faced by teachers from this dramatic shift to their normal ways of working. Teachers’ stress and anxiety increased substantially during the pandemic, workloads grew, and resilience was challenged.

To ensure continuity of learning, teachers had to very quickly upskill in new technological platforms and systems, working around-the-clock to support their students, despite reports of many teachers feeling very unprepared and overwhelmed. EdTech companies seized the pandemic as an opportunity to further roll out digital technologies and online learning support to help schools during intense remote learning while profiting significantly.

The teacher workforce shortage problem was made even more acute by the pandemic, mirroring the ‘great resignation’ trend occurring elsewhere in the world of work where millions voluntarily quit their jobs in a re-evaluation of their life and career decisions.

Post-COVID: Sustained impacts for the teaching profession?

The World Health Organization announced in mid-2023 that the pandemic was no longer a public health emergency. As economies and societies moved to recover from the global pandemic, the opportunity is ripe to consider how ways of working have fundamentally changed, or not, from the world of work being ‘turned upside down’.

In a recent article, we outlined a research agenda to understand ways in which the pandemic may have marked an inflection point in disrupting education systems, specifically its sustained impact on teachers’ work and workload. We were curious to understand how the pandemic reshaped or hastened existing thinking and practice around teachers’ use of technology, delivery models of education, and more flexible ways of working. While it is difficult to establish direct causal links, we were interested to understand the ways in which teachers’ work and workload has been changing in light of these complex crises and the impact of these global trends.

As experts in work and employment, we looked to broader patterns of change happening in the world of work, which the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated, such as remote and flexible work, automation, and augmentation to work roles and content of work, to understand what was happening to teachers’ work. Our call for further research on these trends was complemented with an interview-based project with school teachers and leaders in New South Wales, in which we share some emerging insights, to understand how the pandemic has changed teachers’ work.

How is teachers’ work changing?

Classroom teaching remains primarily a face-to-face learning experience in physical environments for five days a week with a relatively small number of students (unlike the massification of higher education), supported by online learning.

There are some early signs of departure from notions of fixed time and place for learning. While in interviews, some teachers mentioned that “I don’t think that fully online is the answer”, there are examples of ways that schools are experimenting with hybrid or blended ways of learning. Flexible arrangements in the form of a four-day school week have been introduced and tested in states such as Queensland in Australia and Missouri in the USA as a way to save teachers’ time and manage costs and staff shortages.

Advancements in artificial intelligence have activated discussions around enabling teachers to work more efficiently and effectively through automating repetitive tasks and standardizing processes. ‘Time-saving’ strategies for teachers have also been proposed in policy solutions like the NSW Department of Education’s ‘Quality Time’ Program which uses online tools of ‘banks’ of curriculum and lesson planning material to support teachers’ lesson preparation.

Yet, these developments have potentially major impacts for how teachers carry out their work and in understanding the way the ‘job’ of teaching is changing. And further questions remain on the implications for students’ learning and needs around social and emotional connection, as well as impacts on parents and local communities from changing models of learning.

Always on, always available

For example, concerns have been raised about the ways the pandemic intensified the expectations of teachers (and other professional workers) to be ‘always on and available’ to work. This was a concern directly raised by teachers in our interviews, with one reporting the encroachment of work activities on their ‘personal’ time: “it’s crazy, it just feels like it’s never ending, you feel like you’re just constantly on your computer”. In response, new industrial and policy provisions in New South Wales and Queensland are empowering public school teachers with the right to ‘digitally disconnect’ to limit non-urgent communications, protect teachers’ non-work time, and support their wellbeing, with this right to become available for other workers Australia-wide under new legislation.

Many teachers also anticipate online delivery of learning to continue in the future, yet have tempered this with caution of the knock-on effects for students, as one teacher commented: “I can definitely see these online platforms, like this online delivery of content being really big in the future. I definitely think that’s going to take over most of content delivery “teaching”. But there’s still such a need for relationships and that social interaction.”

Careful consideration needed

Technologies and emerging work arrangements are changing the way that teachers carry out their work, which has been intensified with the pandemic. But careful consideration is needed of the implications of these trends so that teachers’ professional autonomy and expertise is protected and so that there is due consideration of the impact of changes on teachers’ workload and working conditions.

Mihajla Gavin is a senior lecturer in the Business School at the University of Technology Sydney.Her research is onl education reforms affecting teachers’ conditions of work. Find her on Twitter @Mihajla_Gavin. Susan McGrath-Champ is Professor in the Work and Organisational Studies Discipline at the University of Sydney Business School, Australia. Her research includes the geographical aspects of the world of work, employment relations and international human resource management.

The terrible trap of temporary teaching: I need to do more to get a job next year

These days, there’s a new kind of teacher in NSW public schools: the ‘temporary’ teacher.

The category of temporary employment, a version of fixed-term contract work, was introduced in 2001. The category has been steadily growing while the proportion of permanent positions has declined and casual positions have remained relatively stable, as indicated in Figure 1 below. Today, about 20% of NSW public school teachers are in temporary positions.

Figure 1: Permanent, Casual and Temporary union members, 1970-2017 (percent of total)

Source: NSWTF Annual Reports, 1970-2017. Data for 2004 are not published.

While a teacher employed in a casual capacity is employed day-to-day, a teacher employed in a temporary capacity is employed full-time for four weeks to a year, or part-time for two terms or more. Temporary teachers tend to be newer teachers – but beyond this, there is very little known about how this category of employment is experienced.

Our research, recently published in the Journal of Educational Administration and History with a free version available here, drew on a large state-wide survey on teacher workload conducted in 2018 – you can find the full report here. We disaggregated the data from more than 18,000 teachers to identify 3,689 temporary teachers and examine both quantitative and qualitative data on how their experiences of workload might be similar or different to that of teachers in permanent and casual roles.

This is what we found.

Quantitatively, teachers in temporary roles report similar levels of workload to their permanent counterparts, both of which are considerably higher than those in casual positions. Teachers in temporary roles estimated working an average of 56 hours per week during term time, compared to 57 hours for those in permanent positions and 40 hours for those employed as casuals. In addition, while 72% of permanent teachers and 70% of temporary teachers report that their job ‘always’ requires them to ‘work very hard’, this is only the case for 58% of casual staff members. Similarly, while 66% of permanent staff members and 62% of temporary staff members report never or rarely having enough time to complete work tasks, this is only the case for 40% of casuals. We note that in these figures, numbers are still high for casual staff – just not as high as they are temporary or permanent teachers.

Yet interestingly, teachers in temporary positions feel like they work harder than those in permanent ones. As one respondent put it, ‘I work as hard if not harder than many permanent teachers’.

This feeling of working harder may be due to the temporary, and more precarious, nature of their roles. These teachers know that their continued employment depends on ‘impressing’ those around them, particularly the school principal. There was a sense of an ‘unspoken pressure for [temporary] teachers to ‘do more’ in order to heighten their chances to get work for the next year’. This need to impress was not, however, felt by those in permanent positions. This appeared to be leading, for some teachers, to tension between staff in different employment categories. As one respondent recalled, ‘two permanent teachers have even stated, “I don’t have to do anything else, I am already permanent”’; another described experiences of permanent teachers ‘prey[ing]’ on temporary teachers by ‘shift[ing] work’ to them.

An additional dimension of our investigation arose when we looked at the differences between men and women teachers in temporary, permanent and casual roles. More men reported being in permanent employment than women, with women being much more likely to be temporary than men. With the tendency of teachers to be predominately women, we found that, in fact, there are more temporary teachers than there are the total number of men teaching in NSW public schools. Our data also suggest that women may also stay longer as temporary teachers than men do, with potential implications for future career opportunities and leadership positions in schools.

Finally, it is worth noting that, in our data, only 27% of those in temporary employment were working in that capacity by choice.

Our findings would imply that something should be done about the growing category of temporary employment in NSW public schools. Addressing this issue has, in fact, been one of the recommendations of the recently released ‘Valuing the Teaching Profession’ report of the ‘Gallop Inquiry’. Working out ways to attract new teachers is also part of the terms of reference of a recently announced review of initial teacher education.

We would also argue that, at system level, the conversion of, in particular long-serving women temporary teachers into permanent employment would be a good thing, signalling respect for the work they do and building benefits for the profession, schools and ultimately students. A widespread reduction in the overall proportion of temporary employees, as well as work hours and workload demands, is also needed.

While teaching is a cognitively, emotionally, and physically strenuous job, historically it has relied upon its reputation as a secure, permanent, and stable career to attract strong candidates to the profession. As pay rates are now notably low, compared to other professions with equivalent levels of education, growing problems with the security, workload and work conditions of teachers become even more critical. Our new teachers, many of whom are temporary, will be tomorrow’s school leaders, and are central to the provision of public education. To maintain a strong teaching profession, it is important that we look after them.

From left to right:

Rachel Wilson is Associate Professor at The Sydney School of Education and Social Work at the University of Sydney. She has expertise in educational assessment, research methods and programme evaluation, with broad interests across educational evidence, policy and practice. She is interested in system-level reform and has been involved in designing, implementing and researching many university and school education reforms. Rachel is on Twitter @RachelWilson100

Susan McGrath-Champ is Professor in the Work and Organisational Studies Discipline at the University of Sydney Business School, Australia. Her research includes the geographical aspects of the world of work, employment relations and international human resource management. Recent studies include those of school teachers’ work and working conditions.

Meghan Stacey is a former high school English and drama teacher and current lecturer in the School of Education at UNSW Sydney. Meghan’s primary research interests sit at the intersection of sociological theory, policy sociology and the experiences of those subject to systems of education. Meghan’s PhD was conferred in April 2018. Meghan is on Twitter @meghanrstacey

Mihajla Gavin is a lecturer in the Business School at the University of Technology Sydney, and has worked as a senior officer in the public sector in Australia across various workplace relations advisory, policy and project roles. Mihajla’s research is concerned with analysing the response of teacher unions to neoliberal education reform that has affected teachers’ conditions of work. Mihajla is on Twitter @Mihajla_Gavin

Scott Fitzgerald is an associate professor and discipline lead of the People, Culture and Organisations discipline group in the School of Management at Curtin University. Scott’s research presently covers two main areas: the changing nature of governance, professionalism and work in the education sector.