When Sam Davies was considering a career in teaching, many people told him he could do much better than being an educator.
Mr Davies ignored this advice and followed his values in making a career change in 2020 and has not looked back.
The UC Senior Secondary College Lake Ginninderra English teacher has been featured as part of a national campaign showcasing the value and importance of teachers in a bid to attract more people into the profession.
"It's actually an incredibly rewarding job because every single day you make a difference to real people who matter who sometimes rely on you," Mr Davies said.
"It's an incredibly privileged position to be able to have that impact on young people. So I would encourage anybody who's even considering teaching to take a really serious look at joining our profession. You won't regret it. It's a wonderful place to work."
Teachers were asked to talk about a memento they had received from a student as part of the $10 million federal government advertising campaign.
Mr Davies shared a certificate from a former student Kira who used her intellect and wit to make his life as a teacher as hard as possible. When he left that school, she gave him a signed certificate of achievement "for surviving all the attitude and craziness".
He's shown the video advertisement to his classes. One of his classes brought tears to his eyes as they applauded.
Mr Davies said teachers often talked down their own profession.
"I'm told it's a bit of a thankless job. I disagree with that," he said.
"I get thanked every single day by my students, sometimes in really small ways."
Workforce shortage
The Education Directorate annual reports shows ACT public school system did not need as many new teachers as predicted after enrolments unexpectedly dropped this year.
Enrolments in public schools were expected to grow by 1.9 per cent this year but they actually decreased by 1 per cent, or 532 students.
This forced a revision of the teacher workforce projection which found the system required 40 fewer teachers in 2023.
Despite the apparent drop in demand for public school teachers, Australian Education Union ACT branch president Angela Burroughs said staff shortages appear to be worse than previous years.
"The ACT, just like in any other jurisdictions are having difficulty recruiting and retaining staff and we're starting from a baseline of being short," Ms Burroughs said.
"There is probably a handful of schools that have been in an extreme position all year."
The directorate will need almost 60 extra full time equivalent teachers each year to 2028 to meet the revised demand.
ACT Education Minister Yvette Berry said there were about 70 vacant positions but the education directorate was on track to fill the positions.
"This year I think has been a particularly difficult year [with] COVID's long tail, flu, we've now got hay fever, pollen is really impacting on teachers health as well," Ms Berry said.
"We're mindful of the fact that ... we might have another difficult next year."
Ms Burroughs said the teacher projection in the annual report was a manufactured figure which did not take into account the realities of schools.
"It's not reporting that we need a certain additional amount of teachers to make up the shortfall. It's just telling you how many teachers we would need if we get that student enrolment."
Ms Berry said it was important to have some number to work towards but there were challenges in recruiting specialist teacher positions, such as language teachers.
"I think the Education Directorate is very mindful of the fact that we have these challenges," she said.
"We can't magic up teachers to just appear. But this campaign is about getting people into the future thinking about taking up teaching so that we don't have these kinds of challenges moving forward."
As at June 21 this year, the teaching workforce dropped by 29.1 full time equivalent staff to 3791.9 compared to June 30, 2022.
The system was nine positions short of reaching its target ratio of 13.3 students per teacher.
"The Directorate acknowledges that not all schools have a full complement of FTE teaching staff and continues to actively prioritise recruitment and placement of teachers to fill all vacant positions in ACT public schools," the report said.
"The Directorate has committed to undertaking a comprehensive review of the projection methodology before the next reporting period to ensure that it remains fit for purpose."
The directorate committed to publishing teacher workforce projections as part of its teacher attraction and retention plan 2022-28.
The annual report said the drop in public school enrolments was due to a fall in the overall numbers of preschool students over the last two years because of a fall in births in 2018 and 2019. In 2023, public preschool enrolments dropped by 196 students.
Three quarters of the public school teaching workforce were women and the average age of teachers was 42.4 years of age.
In the last financial year, 7.9 per cent of staff left the directorate, up from 5.9 per cent in the previous year.
The report said this could be explained by lower numbers of resignations during the uncertain COVID-19 years and because of the directorate initiating "forfeiture of office" procedures for people who had been on extended periods of unauthorised absence.
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