The ACT's opposition will move a motion of no-confidence against Education Minister Yvette Berry after the workplace safety watchdog issued a prohibition notice to Calwell High School over serious risks to health and safety.
The WorkSafe ACT notice was issued to the school after inspectors found teachers and administration staff were being abused, sworn at, screamed at and subjected to sexualised behaviour or violence from students on a daily basis.
Ms Berry said on Tuesday that she was distressed by the findings from WorkSafe ACT. She said the government had been working with Calwell over a number of months after a number of issues had been raised by both the school and the union. These issues were mostly related to safety that resulted from staff absences.
"We have been putting some significant effort into Calwell High School around staffing but also around implementing our positive behaviours for learning culture framework, which is about improving culture in our school communities," Ms Berry said.
But the government did not enact a remote learning policy for the school, despite the WorkSafe notice highlighting that teachers were regularly taking classes of more than 40 students due to a chronic shortage of staff and COVID-19 absence. In one instance, a class of 75 students was supervised by one teacher and one learning support officer.
Remote learning for students in years 7 and 8 was enacted following the prohibition notice from WorkSafe ACT.
The inspectors learned there was a growing number of student mobs forming who would physically target and assault other students, mainly in the year 8 cohort, with the year 7 cohort starting to copy these behaviours.
One teacher had been assaulted the previous week while trying to prevent one student from assaulting another, resulting in a dislocated shoulder, several broken teeth, welts to the lower arm and bruising to the back.
Despite this, Ms Berry sought to defend the school and said a lot of the issues were due to teacher shortages.
"Calwell is a great school, it is a safe school and this is a rare circumstance that has occurred," she said.
"WorkSafe has done their job and made recommendations about how we can do that and make sure that happens immediately.
"This is a really challenging time and we know that COVID has absolutely exacerbated the staff shortages that are occurring in our schools, not just here in the ACT but across the country."
Ms Berry referred to issues at Calwell High School as a "rare incident". But this was in stark contrast to the education union, which said this was "not an isolated case".
"Violent incidents should be rare in ACT public schools. However, we know that they are all too frequent as resources are further and further stretched," Australian Education Union ACT branch secretary Patrick Judge said.
Mr Judge said safety issues at Calwell High School were raised by the union in July 2021. He said the education directorate had failed to address staff shortages, oversized classes and instances of occupational violence.
The union referred the matter to WorkSafe. The ACT government was aware of issues at the school but did not refer the matter to the workplace safety watchdog.
"It is the responsibility of the Education Directorate to ensure that its schools are properly resourced for the program they are expected to run, and for the needs of their students. They have failed to uphold this responsibility," Mr Judge said.
"The fact that it takes a staff member to be seriously injured and the intervention of an external regulator to provide a degree of safety for the staff and students at Calwell High School demonstrates a lack of care on the part of the Education Directorate."
Ms Berry repeatedly referred to an incident that occurred on March 24, which resulted in the school being locked down. She did not specify what incident this was. She said she found out about this on the day after it happened.
The WorkSafe notice has prompted the Canberra Liberals to move a no-confidence motion in Ms Berry for failing to keep students, teachers and school communities safe. Opposition Leader Elizabeth Lee will move the motion on Wednesday morning.
"I am devastated for our students, teachers and school communities who are enduring horrific conditions under the watch of this Minister," Ms Lee said.
"Systemic violence and an unsafe environment in Canberra's government schools has become a reality under this Labor-Greens government."
Opposition education spokesman Jeremy Hanson said this was the worst thing he had seen during his time in politics.
"I think that parents, teachers and children will be rightly disgusted with this government and with the minister whose response has been absolutely hopeless," Mr Hanson said.
"It's unacceptable, it's unprecedented and just making excuses or trying to blame COVID for what are clearly long term systemic problems is unacceptable.
"Classrooms have got to be safe but this is not new and the minister cannot be blaming this solely on COVID, we went into this pandemic with a teacher shortage with a crisis already. It's been going on for a long time and the government hasn't responded."
