Teachers in Wyndham have been clocking up nearly two full days of unpaid overtime every week, new research reveals.
The Australian Council for Education Research’s workload survey found, on average, Wyndham teachers work more than 53 hours every week, with principals working 56 hours weekly on average.
The report, commissioned by the Australian Education Union (AEU), also found teachers spent just shy of 80 per cent of their working weeks on teaching and teaching-related tasks.
The rest of their time was spent on paperwork, meetings and other duties, such as yard patrols.
The Wyndham teachers were among the 13,000 surveyed statewide. Of those, about a third said they regularly considered leaving the profession.
Teachers cited more protection and respect for student-free hours they work, as well as reducing government changes to curriculums and cutting back on bureaucracy, as the biggest factors in making their workloads more manageable.
AEU Victorian branch president Meredith Peace said teacher workload issues were a result of “chronic underfunding of Victorian public schools”.
“School staff workloads are at crisis point,” Ms Peace said.
“Teachers in Wyndham are working more than nine hours overtime during the working week, and an additional five hours every weekend.
“Nearly 90 per cent of teachers in the region say that their workload negatively affects the quality of their teaching,” she said.
“And more than two-thirds of local teachers don’t have enough time to plan their classes to the level that they would want.”
A government spokesman did not respond to specific questions about the report, saying only that the state government was “investing billions of dollars in Victoria’s education system to support [teachers], while we ensure all students have access to a great education”.
“Our teachers do an amazing job,” the spokesman said.
“These matters are subject to the EBA negotiations currently under way, and we will continue to bargain in good faith.”
