As Newsmonth went to press, the IEU had received responses to its staffing shortages survey from more than 330 schools.
The survey aims to identify staff shortages across non-government schools in NSW and the ACT, and to understand the extent to which casual teaching vacancies cannot be filled on a daily basis.
Early responses indicate that 29 percent of primary schools and nearly 60 percent of secondary schools have staffing vacancies. These vacancies are spread across all key learning areas and are not restricted to mathematics and science as is commonly thought.
In the two weeks of the survey period (1 August to 12 August), 80 percent of schools that responded said they had been unable to fill casual teaching vacancies on one or more days.
Of considerable concern was that about 10 percent of schools reported more than 20 casual vacancies across the two weeks that couldn't be filled.
This data broadly reflects the results from the IEU’s survey conducted in March 2021 and once again confirms the profession is in crisis.
