THE NSW Minister for Education Sarah Mitchell has announced a new plan to change the way teachers work at school.

Teachers and school staff have an opportunity to provide feedback on the NSW Government’s Quality Time Action Plan which hopes to reduce ‘duplicative, repetitive, and low-value administrative tasks in schools’ in order to free up teachers’ time for planning and teaching.

The plan is based around using technology and digital tools to streamline teaching and administrative tasks.

The Action Plan identifies a number of areas for improvement such as overhauling assessment systems to allow teachers to generate individual student-focused assessments quickly, an online tool to allow teachers to easily store, find, share and tailor lesson plans and learning programs and streamlined administration requirements for teachers to maintain their accreditation.

However, the New South Wales Teachers’ Federation does not quite share the Minister’s enthusiasm.

Ian Watson, Country Organiser for the Federation, said it may not be a coincidence that the announcement came the day after the Federation’s launch of its ‘More Than Thanks’ campaign which points out that teachers are overworked and underpaid.

Mr Watson said, “The Quality Time Action Plan is a desperate attempt to deflect attention away from the crippling workloads the Government itself is responsible for.”

He said that administrative tasks add 15 hours a week to teachers’ workloads and, if the plan works, this will be cut by one hour a week.

Mr Watson described this as “Quite insulting!” and said that after the launch of the “More Than Thanks” campaign, teachers at five Coffs Coast schools have voted to take short industrial action to protest.

The NSW Teachers’ Federation says that, compared to OECD countries, NSW primary teachers spend 11% more hours in the classroom, lower secondary teachers 14.5% and upper secondary teachers 20% more than the OECD average.

A local teacher who spoke to News Of The Area agreed that hours in the classroom were high.

He said that schools already used technology to simplify and streamline practices, such as record keeping and planning lessons.

The teacher said that being able to share teaching resources across schools would be of benefit, but standardising assessment should be viewed with caution.

He said, “Each school and each class is different and every student is different so standardisation may not work in every subject.”

However, he said that the possibility of being able to access professional learning opportunities more easily would be very welcome.

The teacher said that the Action Plan could be an improvement but he had not seen any detail and will need to wait and see what end result the consultation produces.

 

By Andrew VIVIAN