Public school teachers provide one of the most important services to our society. They are also largely overworked under the pressure of administrative responsibility. In the face of this, how can teachers be better supported to provide continuous, quality education to our children?
This research explores the experience of public-school teachers in Australia; presenting findings to help state and federal government avoid the difficulties presented by past and present structures of governance.
The challenge
With their weekly workload amassing over 50 hours, teachers in Australian public schools are facing long hours under heavy and intensifying demands. These high workloads have an adverse effect on teachers’ health and wellbeing, and are negatively impacting teacher recruitment and retention. But where is the pressure to spend substantial ‘out-of-school’ hours working coming from? And what can be done about it?
Over the last decade, devolution policy in public management has remained dominant in Australia – placing greater school autonomy over the areas of budgeting and staffing. This structure increases the responsibility of principals and teachers to undertake organisation and management of work as opposed to independent decisions around curriculum and assessment. This project examines the governance structures and demands that are affecting teachers' work, and analyses responses from governments and unions.
Solution
Working collaboratively across multiple universities, this project has spanned nearly ten years and has included many key research areas including school autonomy, teachers' workload, precarious work, professionalism, and teacher union responses. To explore the experience of teachers, the project team have undertaken a range of stakeholder engagement activities including surveys and interviews with public school teachers and leaders as well as union representatives. This work has also been placed in historical context to understand changes to teachers' working conditions in recent decades. These studies found that school autonomy policies are creating workload and administrative burdens, causing strained relationships in schools between teachers and leaders, increasing job insecurity, and heightening competitive practices in schools. Research findings were synthesised in five short articles for the NSW Teacher's Federation journal:
- Teachers’ work and working conditions: Collaborating to drive change
- Teachers’ voices and their unions
- The impact of devolutionary reform on teachers and principals
- Temporary teachers and precarious work
- Teacher workload and intensifying demands
Outcome and impact
There is no firm evidence that the way school autonomy has been implemented in Australia has improved student outcomes. Instead, this research has raised real concerns that devolution and school autonomy has contributed to the inequities in our education systems and negatively impacted the work of teachers and leaders. While these findings present a stark reality, there is hope for the future, with concerns presented in the research findings already informing government policy in NSW. Moving forward, this research has potential to support future governance structures: helping to avoid the range of difficulties evident under previous autonomy models.
The teaching profession is very complex. We actually do have a crisis within the teaching profession. We need to be taking this seriously because teachers are fundamental for students' education now and into the future as well.
My research focuses on teachers' work and working conditions. Over a number of years, we have seen policies coming out that have really focused on a market-driven education system; that are focused on privatisation; based upon the idea that having a market system within education produces better educational outcomes.
What we've actually been seeing through the research, however, is that teachers' work and working conditions have been really significantly impacted. Policies like school autonomy and devolution have actually increased teachers' workload.
They've increased teachers' working hours. There's been increased precarity, or a lack of job security. The administrative burdens and the paperwork burdens on teachers increase significantly as well because of these policies.
I think it's brought some real fundamental awareness to a range of problems that we're seeing within the teaching profession. There's also been a range of policy announcements which have tried to think about, "How can we actually do things differently?"
We've also seen some current policies as well, trying to address the teacher workload problem. I'm not too sure those policies are always getting the issue right, but I think it's at least a starting point to continue this conversation of how important the teaching profession is, and how things need to be done differently.
Journal articles
Stacey M, Gavin M, Fitzgerald S, McGrath-Champ S and Wilson R (2024). Reducing teachers’ workload or deskilling ‘core’ work? Analysis of a policy response to teacher workload demands. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education. DOI: 10.1080/01596306.2023.2271856
Gavin M and Stacey M (2023) Enacting autonomy reform in schools: the re-shaping of roles and relationships under Local Schools, Local Decisions. Journal of Educational Change. 25: 501-523.
McGrath-Champ S, Fitzgerald S, Gavin M, Stacey M and Wilson R (2023) Commodification processes in the employment heartland: Temporary teachers’ experiences of work and workload. Work, Employment and Society 37(5): 1165-1185
Gavin M, McGrath-Champ S, Stacey M and Wilson R (2022). Women’s participation in teacher unions: implications of a ‘triple burden’ for union gender equality strategies. Economic and Industrial Democracy 43(2): 830-852.
Gavin M, McGrath-Champ S, Wilson R, Fitzgerald S and Stacey M (2021) Teacher workload in Australia: National reports of intensification and its threats to democracy. In D Riddle, A Heffernan and D Bright (eds) New Perspectives on Education for Democracy: Creative Responses to Local and Global Challenges, Routledge, pp. 110-123.
McGrath-Champ, Gavin M, Stacey M and Wilson R (2022). Collaborating for policy impact: Academic-practitioner collaboration in industrial relations research. Journal of Industrial Relations 64(5): 759-784. DOI: 10.1177/00221856221094887
Stacey M, Fitzgerald S, Wilson R, McGrath-Champ S and Gavin M (2022) Teachers, fixed-term contracts and school leadership: Toeing the line and jumping through hoops, Journal of Educational Administration and History (Special Issue) 54(1): 54-68.
Fitzgerald S, McGrath-Champ S, Stacey M, Wilson R and Gavin M (2019) Intensification of teachers' work under devolution: A 'tsunami' of paperwork. Journal of Industrial Relations 61(5): 613-636.
Gavin M and McGrath-Champ S (2017) Devolving authority: the impact of giving public schools power to hire staff. Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources 55(2): 244-274.
Media
Gavin M and Stacey M (2024). Tackle teachers’ workloads but leave lesson planning to the experts. Sydney Morning Herald.
This research included collaboration with external partners.
- Professor Susan McGrath-Champ, Honorary Professor, Business School, University of Sydney
- Dr Meghan Stacey, Senior Lecturer, School of Education, University of New South Wales
- Dr Scott Fitzgerald, Associate Professor, School of Management and Marketing, Curtin University
Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all
Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all
