The employment and education news from down under last month was rife last month with chatter surrounding the teacher shortages, current and impending, in Australian school systems. Following the results of a survey published by the Australian Council for Educational Research, efforts to deal with the current shortages have resulted in combined classrooms and in teachers covering courses outside of their subject areas of expertise.
Educators from around the country have voiced the need for better working conditions as a starting point for attracting new teachers into the national school system, and are calling for improvements, including better pay and smaller class sizes.
Although the shortages are due in part to the large number of teachers who are reaching retirement age, and to the fact that qualified entrants to workforce are choosing jobs in which they perceive working conditions and pay scale to be better and higher than those in education, the shortages also may have to do with a trend that began almost decade ago, wherein qualified teachers have been recruited for positions outside of Australia. Active recruitment initiatives helped fill teacher shortages, namely in the UK and other english-speaking markets.
According to an article from the BBC news in 2000, the perception then was that there was “a surplus of teachers in Australia.” This surplus has apparently dried up. To meet the new challenges in recruitment, schools will not only have to focus on attracting new teachers, but on solid retention strategies to keep desirable teachers from seeking better opportunities within the Australian market as well as abroad.