PRINCIPAL REPORT

Dear Parents, Carers, Students and Friends,

It is likely that you have seen further recent reports in the media about the teacher shortage which is gripping Victoria. Because of this shortage, some of you will be aware that some classes have had prolonged periods this year without a formally designated teacher. I wanted to give you an insight into the challenges we face because of the shortage, and how we are rising to meet them.

Firstly, we should recognise that the teacher shortage affects all schools across all sectors, and is consistent with a much more general labour shortage across all areas of the Australian workforce. 

The shortage has manifested itself in different ways. Firstly, the most obvious of these is that the number applicants for each vacancy has diminished significantly over the past four or five years. Secondly, the quality of some applicants for vacancies has also declined over that time. Thirdly, applicants sometimes do not take up positions they have been recruited to, often with very little notice, because they have accepted a later offer at a more preferred school.

Taken together, these challenges mean we have had to take more time recruiting new staff than ever before. For example, we have needed to conduct up to three rounds of advertisements and interviews to ensure that new teachers joining us are of the quality we require. Because each position has a mandatory two-week application period, each cycle of advertisement and selection takes at least three weeks, and this has meant some classes have had replacement teachers for lengthy periods of time.

We are fortunate to have a large pool of highly skilled regular Contract Replacement Teachers (CRT’s). These staff know our school and our students. Many of these CRT’s are ex BSC staff returning from leave or increasing their time fraction. The approach we have taken is to use this pool to fill these posts during the recruitment process.  In doing so, we have strived to minimise the number of different teachers any particular class will have for a particular subject by employing these CRT’s for regular sessions with particular classes. 

We also spend time monitoring the effectiveness of the CRT’s we use. This means that not only do we ensure the classes they are covering are receiving high quality instruction, but it allows us to identify talent which we can then recruit into the school on a longer-term basis.

We have also used the Permission to Teach program to great effect to employ excellent final year teaching students to fill classes.

Fortunately, we have not had to take steps such as discontinuing subjects or collapsing classes as some other school have.

As of today, from the beginning of term two, we only have one maternity leave position left to fill, so in comparison to many other schools, we are doing very well.

I thank our parents, carers and students for their patience and understanding of as we work to make sure we have the very best teachers in place in our classrooms.

Yours sincerely,

Richard Minack

Principal