An overhaul of Canberra's casual relief teacher system could see schools employ more teachers to create their own "in-built" supply, in a bid to address staff shortages across the city.
An ACT government task force — made up of Education Directorate and Australian Education Union (AEU) representatives — found the current casual relief model "no longer meets the day-to-day staffing requirements in schools".
The task force handed down a report with 20 recommendations to attract and retain staff, including incentives for recently retired teachers or those on long-term leave to return to the classroom.
"[Staffing] was a challenge before COVID, and it's certainly been worsened by COVID," directorate director David Matthews said.
"It's not a uniform issue, it doesn't affect schools equally.
"Essentially we have a supply problem, and this is about making sure all of our schools can be fully staffed."
The report found during term two of this year, an average of 339 classes were separated and 210 classes were combined each day, while there were 272 instances per week of college students having to shift to online learning.
There were also 12 schools that were forced to shift to remote learning three times due to acute teacher shortages and a lack of available relief teachers.
New relief system, reduced workloads
Mr Matthews said the task force's key recommendation was for schools to have their own "in-built" relief system.
"Rather than relying on casuals, we're going to encourage all schools to employ additional teachers so they have that in-built relief so that they're not doing that mad phone call on the morning when they have staff absences," he said.
"In-built relief effectively is additional teachers. Schools already have a casual budget so that they can employ staff as they need them.
"Rather than waiting for the absences to occur, we think those staff can be offered longer-term contracts or indeed permanent employment."
Mr Matthews said reducing pressure and workloads on teachers was another focus of the recommendations.
"Particularly during COVID-19, but indeed at all times, we want teachers to focus on teaching and learning because that's how we get the best impacts for our kids," he said.
He said a sustainable workload management committee would be established to look at employing more learning assistants in schools to help teachers with administrative duties.
Incentives for retired teachers to return to classrooms
The Education Directorate will also develop incentives for recently retired teachers or teachers on long-term leave to return to the profession.
Those incentives include being paid to complete mandatory training, payment of professional teacher and working with vulnerable people registration costs, and other relevant out-of-pocket expenses.
As of July 27, there were 65 classroom teacher vacancies in ACT schools, including 22 permanent positions (five-year placements) and 43 temporary vacancies ranging from between three to 12 months.
Education Minister Yvette Berry said a five-year plan to attract and retain teachers would be established by next year, to recruit 250 to 300 teachers annually to meet growing demand.
"We can't magic up new teachers tomorrow, but we know what the issues are that are in front of us and we have a plan now to address those issues," she said.
"We are the first jurisdiction in the country to come up with a plan … to address these really important issues across our school systems, well before the national plan is put in place at the end of this year."
'Validating' report offers immediate changes
AEU ACT president Angela Burroughs said the report was "validating" for Canberra teachers who had raised concerns about staff shortages for years.
She said she was pleased the report offered immediate responses and a longer-term plan.
"There are a number of ways that teachers can feel valued and certainly more competitive pay is one of the ways that we can value our teachers," she said.
"But another really big issue for teachers is having enough time to be the best teacher that they can be."
She said an AEU survey last year found teachers were working between 10 and 15 hours of unpaid overtime each week, and that had blown out further this year with increased absences due to COVID-19 and influenza.
"We need to be able to provide teachers with more time and we're only going to be able to give them more time with more teachers," she said.
"But how are we going to get more teachers? ... we need to pay them better."
'Schools have to be safe'
Opposition education spokesperson Jeremy Hanson agreed that reducing workloads and increasing base pay would help to attract and retain teachers.
"It's got to be competitive with other professions and it's got to be competitive with teaching in other jurisdictions," he said.
"We know that we've got a situation here, particularly with the federal public service, that that is an easy route for teachers to leave the teaching profession and move into the public service.
"So, we've got to acknowledge that we have a price to pay here."
But Mr Hanson said more also needed to be done to address safety issues in schools, such as those seen earlier this year at Calwell High School.
"Schools have to be safe for the students and safe for the teachers," he said.
"If there are behaviours that are there that are unsafe, they have to be dealt with.
"There's no simple solution, but we need to make sure we have enough staff in our schools and … we've got to have a very, very strict policy in terms of zero-tolerance for assault and violence."
