ACT public school teachers are on their way to being the highest-paid in the country after the union gave the nod of approval to a generous offer.
It will mean a teacher in their first year of service will be earning $91,396 before superannuation by the end of 2025. Teachers' salaries will reach $130,000 after eight years in the classroom.
The offer is seen as the ACT government putting a concerted effort into tackling the dire shortage of trained, registered teachers head-on.
But experts say salary alone won't change the situation.
Welcome boost
For young teachers starting out in the profession, the pay rise is a game-changer.
Taylah Bacon, who is about to start a job at an ACT public primary school, comes from a long line of teachers and was well aware of the heavy workload and pay progression that awaited her as a teacher.
"I never thought that I would be able to get into the house market. By the end of 2026 I'll be earning over that $100,000. I can then think I can get a deposit for a house and start thinking about what my life is going to look like," Ms Bacon said.
"Whereas, if you were still we were still on the same salary income as before ... you don't see that longevity of the job going forward. Now you see there's maybe some light at the end of the tunnel."
Jess Willding is coming to the end of her bachelor of early childhood and primary education at the University of Canberra. She saw the financial strain her brother, also a teacher, went through in his first few years working at a NSW public school.
"He's used credit cards to resource his NSW classroom and buy professional wardrobe attire and make sure that his car was able to get to work. It's been a quite expensive first two years for him," Ms Willding said.
"I do think that the starting salary increase is wonderful."
One of the causes of the teacher shortage is a drop in the number of people starting and completing teaching degrees. Nationally, the number of people completing initial teacher education in 2019 (16,644) was 11.9 per cent below the 2017 peak (18,890).
The number of newly registered teachers in the ACT dropped significantly in 2018 and 2019, then stabilised at lower levels. In 2021 there were 413 new teacher registrations, 48 per cent lower than in 2015 (787).
University of Canberra executive dean of education Barney Dalgarno said it was pleasing to see ACT teachers get a significant pay rise and it was likely other school systems would follow.
"That's got to help people to feel confident that if they do go into teaching ... they'll be well-paid," Professor Dalgarno said.
"This is going to make it harder to attract teachers to schools in towns, like Queanbeyan and Yass and so on, if it's not matched."
Workload woes
The 2022 graduate outcomes survey showed teachers were already the fourth highest-paid graduates in the first year after university. The new starting salary will make teaching graduates the second highest-paid cohort after dentistry ($100,000) and before medicine graduates ($79,800).
Australian Catholic University senior lecturer in educational leadership Dr Paul Kidson said money alone wouldn't attract and retain teachers.
"It's not going to hurt. What I wouldn't be confident is that it will be the total solution, because it's actually not the total cause of the problems," Dr Kidson said.
His research, including the annual Australian Principal Occupational Health, Safety and Wellbeing Survey, consistently finds educators are suffering because of the sheer volume of work, a rise in mental health issues and occupational violence.
"You could give someone $200,000. Do they want to turn up and be subjected to physical violence and intimidation and that type of behaviour? Some people will always say, 'I couldn't care how much you pay me. I'm not going to do that'."
Dr Kidson said there was still a misconception teachers had plenty of holidays and short face-to-face teaching hours, but during term things were going "hell for leather".
Australian Teacher Workforce Data from the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership showed in 2022, full-time classroom teachers worked an average of 53.1 hours a week. This works out to be nearly 15 hours per week above their contracted hours.
Australian Education Union ACT branch president Angela Burroughs said there needed to be a cultural reset on what work teachers are required to do.
"It does involve teachers and school leaders taking a tough look at what they do and why they do it," Ms Burroughs said.
"One of the struggles is to just get agreement on what sort of workload reductions will be of most benefit to schools. When you ask schools, the answers vary."
Some workload reduction measures are in the agreement - including three extra pupil-free days per year - but the union is working on further measures with the Education Directorate.
Sustainable careers
Prof Dalgarno welcomed the fact early career teachers in their first three years on the job will have one hour less face-to-face teaching time to use for planning and career development in the new agreement.
"It's certainly clear that there is a retention problem with new teachers, and anything that we can do to give them more time to seek mentoring and support, more time to prepare their lessons, because it just takes so much longer to prepare a lesson when you're an inexperienced teacher, is a good thing," he said.
Ms Bacon has seen friends burn out and leave the profession in their third or fourth years on the job.
"Along with the pay being such a great improvement, I feel like having that support of even one extra hour of class is going to make a difference to many people starting out as well," she said.
But Impact Economics education lead Julie Sonnemann said the pay deal didn't go far enough in boosting the pay of experienced teachers.
"Young people are not just looking at entry-level salaries, but their earning trajectory over time. Across Australia we know that teacher salaries start off quite competitive at the graduate level, but become less competitive compared to those of university-educated peers as teachers reach their 40s and 50s," Ms Sonnemann said.
"In a city like Canberra where there are competitive Commonwealth public service jobs with senior executives getting paid above $200,000 and much more, we need to be asking whether the new ACT teacher salaries of around $130,000 are sufficient to attract young, smart individuals with other options before them.
"We need to be creating really attractive career paths for those who want to teach, and not necessarily go into school principalship."
Talking up teachers
The federal budget included $10 million over two years for a national communications campaign to raise the status of teachers.
Prof Dalgarno said an advertising campaign similar to the defence recruitment campaign could help to promote the positive impact teachers make every day at work.
Leila Chalmers is completing her bachelor of early childhood and primary education but is unsure if she can have a long-term career in teaching because of the negative press.
"I definitely think that something that could really help teachers is a general change in the culture about how we view teachers, if teachers are more respected and valued," Ms Chalmers said.
She said the pay boost signalled a turning point in the value placed on teachers' work.
"It is saying, 'We value you, we see you and you deserve to be paid more. And here you go'. It's not just talking about it. It's actually doing it and I think that's a really positive thing. And it does make me feel better about the future of teaching," she said.
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