South-west state school teachers will be given four new non-teaching days from 2018 in a move local principals have welcomed.
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About 40,000 state school teachers will be relieved of classroom duties for four days each year to plan lessons, attend professional development sessions and work on the curriculum.
Great South West Coast Network of Government Schools chair Peter Auchettl said they supported the move 100 per cent.
The Warrnambool Primary School principal said the 30 schools in the network had known about the change for “quite some time” and it was part of the new enterprise bargaining agreement for Victorian teachers.
“There’s quite a strict criteria on how those days are to be used, but it’s about professional development for the teachers which extrapolates into improved teacher capacity which then leads into increased student outcomes,” Mr Auchettl said.
Mr Auchettl said casual relief teachers (CRT) would replace regular teachers on those days, which could prove problematic if there were not enough available in the region to meet the increased demand. “The challenges will be around CRT in rural areas but as a network of schools, particularly the schools in Warnambool, we’ve been sitting down to try and offset the dates so we don’t all have the teachers out on the one day. It will be a co-ordinated approach across the community.”
Warrnambool East Primary School principal Michelle Bickley-Miller said the extra time recognised teachers’ heavy workloads with increased demand to connect with the community, to have a precise understanding of students’ learning needs and to better engage students in their learning.
She hopes the initiative will allow teachers to collaborate and participate in more in-depth analysis, understanding and planning. “It just takes the pressure off,” she said.
“There should be positive impact on students in that teachers will know they’ve got the time to catch up on some critical work without them being exhausted when they’re teaching the kids. It will still never be enough (time) but it’s acknowledgment that it does take a lot of people’s time and that’s usually done late at night or on weekends.”
She echoed Mr Auchettl’s sentiments in the challenges around getting CRT teachers when “so many schools will be needing them”.