Respect
Tasmanian public schools and colleges are consistently achieving great results.
When considering the historical and cultural issues associated with apparent retention of full-time students to year 12, the latest Productivity Commission report tells us that catholic and independent schools (63.8 per cent), despite significant federal and state government funding on top of weighty fees, are unable to retain students at the same rate as their public counterparts (80.4 per cent).
Conceivably it is the diversity of public college offerings and the critical mass of students that drives retention success. And when you add part-time students to the equation with Tasmania having a higher proportion due to caring and work responsibilities, apparent public college retention has hovered around the 80 per cent mark for a decade.
Public schools remain central to the prosperity of communities.They add context and colour and social interactions and friendships and meaning. And educators bring these difficult to measure ideals to life through their commitment, dedication, enthusiasm, and exemplary practice. Success does not happen by chance.
Teaching is an art and a science and preparation is key with most of the thinking occurring before and after prescribed hours of work. From considering your interactions with children bringing a vast array of needs to ensuring that buddy teachers and teams are ready and confident to make a difference, the role of an educator is far more than lessons.
Educating students is the most important job in our state. Tasmania's economic, social, environmental, and artistic future relies upon our ability to improve educational commitment and attainment.
Long gone are the days when students simply downed formal education tools and headed to the workforce. And long gone are the days when grade tens left at the beginning of December to give them advantage in the employment race.
Unskilled jobs are like hen's teeth and coupled with the important changes to the Education Act including mandating that young adults are in full-time work, college, or training until aged 18, the value of education is slowly increasing in our community.
The COVID-19 pandemic for its challenges, once and for all highlighted the work teachers, principals, and support staff put in to make each day successful for students.
It was wonderful to have classrooms filled with enthusiastic students last Wednesday. But if given a dollar for every time somebody stated that teachers have way too many holidays, I would be a rich man.
Frankly, holidays may be calendarised, but they are rarely if ever taken in full. As a teacher eloquently posted to social media last week: "9am-3pm my a$%se".
But educators would not have it any other way. Education is not just a profession; it is a calling and a lifestyle that has rich intrinsic rewards with students still recalling the positive impact years later.
Principals are not just leaders in their schools and colleges, they are community leaders, and we need to ensure their conditions reflect responsibilities, skills, and commitment. In fact, public school and college principals in Tasmania have reported working up to 15 days during their holidays in January alone, with a variety of pressing and essential tasks.
The main tasks required to be completed by principals included recruitment and induction of staff, professional learning preparation, school tours and new student interviews, school business manager support, vandalism and capital works call outs, timetabling, school improvement plans, leadership team meetings, budgeting, and child safety meetings.
Recognition of principals has been strengthened with limited days of time off in lieu for those working during the January break. However, structural barriers and workload demands mean many principals are unable to fully access TOIL.
As a former public-school principal, I know how demanding and complex the role is, and continuing to advocate for school leaders to help retain and attract the best people for the job is in my DNA. A career in education should be chosen and celebrated like family's value engineering and medicine and law.
For that to occur we must all stand up and preach the value of educators. It is the community's responsibility to ensure the importance of the profession is underpinned by admiration just as it was during lockdown.
From a state government perspective, the reclassification of principal salaries that recognises the complexity and diversity of their work, which is central to the success of any school or college, must be funded and comparable to the very best of the private sector workforce.
Teachers and support staff willing to spend their last weeks of holiday setting up classrooms with displays and materials aimed at engaging new and returning children should be acknowledged and applauded. For educators improved money and conditions are essential, although it is also about recognition and respect.
Further, there must be efforts made to record, celebrate, and publicise high-quality qualitative data such as engagement and motivation. Because while it remains essential to interrogate a range of data forms, simply applying measurement tools more commonly found in economics is an unsophisticated and unimaginative way of attempting to improve educational attainment.
It takes a village to raise a child and a community to improve a school.