Gilgandra high school regularly has sheep in the back paddock and is situated in a town of just 4,000 people surrounded by open plains and farmland – but it is not considered rural by the New South Wales education department.
It is one of 735 schools outside greater Sydney that are ineligible for rural and remote school incentives.
Rural and remote school incentives can be worth up to $75,000 in rental subsidies and other benefits to teachers offered a full-time position. They are offered to schools in regional NSW that are classified as having four or more “transfer points” under a system designed to ensure adequate teacher supply for hard-to-staff schools.
The points are allocated to permanent teachers at the end of each year of service. They can be accumulated and used to transfer to the teachers’ preferred school down the track.
Incentives include moving allowances, trial placements and additional personal leave. Most Sydney schools receive one or two transfer points and are not eligible for these incentives.
But according to research undertaken by Guardian Australia, some schools that are more than 400km from Sydney are also one- or two-point schools, putting them on par with metropolitan schools in competing for teachers. Gilgandra high school and Merriwa Central school in western NSW are just two of the many that only receive two transfer points and are not classed as incentive schools.
These non-incentive rural schools are struggling to fill teaching positions amid staff shortages. Breanna Patton, the NSW Teachers Federation representative for Gilgandra high school, said in some schools this had resulted in classes being merged, principals covering teaching roles and specialist subjects such as mathematics being taught by teachers with a humanities specialty.
“An increase in incentives has the potential to attract more teaching staff to school,” Patton said.
There are now 10 vacancies at Gilgandra high school. While some are being backfilled, Patton said it was unfair on the students.
“A full complement of teachers would enable us to run more senior classes and provide students with access to specialist teachers in subjects such as design and technology,” she said. “It could result in more extracurricular activities for students and enable staff to engage with professional learning during school hours.”
Some schools in suburban Sydney receive more incentive points than regional schools, usually due to a difficulty retaining teachers.
One Sydney-based teacher, who asked to remain anonymous, said they would be more inclined to move to a regional school with higher incentive points.
“If you make the decision to move to a remote school, why wouldn’t you go even more remote and get the points and other incentives?” they said. “It’s a no-win situation moving to a regional school without major incentives.
“Why would a teacher move to a place like Gilgandra – over five hours from Sydney, away from services and family – to receive the same transfer points as a school much closer to Sydney, or receive more transfer points working in a disadvantaged school in south-east Sydney?”
Merriwa Central school, 300km north-west of Sydney, has had five teacher vacancies since the start of the year.
“I’d love to get incentives, and incentives would be great, but we just don’t have the teachers to offer them to at the moment,” said Merriwa Central school’s NSW Teachers Federation representative, Harley Hannon.
“I do think that it would help with recruitment, it would definitely contribute towards making those positions somewhat easier to fill. But in the current climate of how staffing is at the moment with the teacher shortage, it’s not even worth it.
“If they turn around and say let’s give you incentives now, that’s fantastic, but who do we give those incentives to? You could give someone $50,000 extra to come to Merriwa, but they’d still stay in Newcastle or Sydney.”
Another funding program, the priority recruitment support, was piloted last year to give a $20,000 recruitment bonus and relocation support package to select positions in regional NSW schools. The program does not include Merriwa Central school.
A spokesperson for the NSW Department of Education said it was updating and modernising the rural and regional incentives scheme after a 2021 review.
In a statement to Guardian Australia, the spokesperson said this included doubling the targeted recruitment bonus from $10,000 up to $20,000 and making temporary teachers eligible for some existing incentives like the $30,000 rural teacher incentive, the $5,000 a year retention bonus and the $10,000 a year experienced teacher bonus.
“Last month we also announced two new incentives: a stamp duty relief payment (up to $10,000) and a relocation support payment (up to $8,000).”
The NSW Teachers Federation is calling for a systemic overhaul of education funding to help plug staffing shortfalls.
“[The government’s] own data indicated falling enrolments into initial teacher education courses at university and growing enrolments in schools,” the union said.
“They sat on their hands for too long, and we are now feeling the impacts of their failed policies. Tokenistic Band-Aid solutions do not work.”
