Thursday, 20 June 2024

Adjournment

Enver ERDOGAN (Northern Metropolitan – Minister for Corrections, Minister for Youth Justice, Minister for Victim Support) (18:48): I move:

That the house do now adjourn.

Teacher workforce

Richard WELCH (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (18:48): (980) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Education. We have a major problem in the Victorian education system right now: teacher shortages. I have visited many schools in my electorate, and in almost every case they have reported that they are scrambling to fill positions, often resulting in the hiring of less experienced or even unqualified staff. The repercussions of these shortages are already being felt across Victoria. Many schools are cutting the length or frequency of, or completely cancelling, camps. These are valuable experiences that contribute to students’ personal and social development. The use of relief teachers is at an unprecedented level. This can only lead to a decline in the quality of education our children receive.

The 2022 teacher supply and demand report paints a very grim picture, revealing that the forecast demand for teachers is expected to outpace supply significantly, so much so that by 2028 the shortfall is projected to be 5036 teachers. According to the department this figure is still current today. Add to this a teacher attrition rate that surged by nearly 20 per cent in the 2021–22 year and adds, conservatively, another 1000 to 2000 teachers to that figure. We know that between 2021 and 2022 the number of teacher vacancies skyrocketed, with primary schools experiencing a staggering 49 per cent increase and secondary schools facing an even more concerning 68 per cent rise. Applications to primary schools dropped from 14.7 to 5.3 applications per position and applications to secondary schools fell from 6.4 applications per vacant position to just 2.8.

What concerns me most is that the department itself has been unable to clearly and confidently say it has strategies in place that will meet the shortfall. At a recent education inquiry hearing I received no satisfactory clarification that the minister’s department had plans that would deliver 5000 new teachers, and this would seem a very basic question to answer. They had measures, they had programs, but there were no definitive statements that their plans would actually address the shortfall numerically. Will the measures do enough? They do not know. Have they got the funding required? They could not say. Are the programs value for money? They cannot say. This is unacceptable and an incompetent approach that typifies their whole approach to teacher recruitment.

Will the Minister for Education commit to a teacher recruitment timetable that addresses the teacher shortage by 2028 and provide details of how many teachers per measure it is expected to deliver, the cost of each measure and the timeframe each measure will require to do so?