The IEU has been engaged with Sydney Catholic Schools (SCS) for many months regarding work intensification and workload management.
There has been significant survey data emerging around the increasing complexity and bureaucratic burden on teachers’ core work through administrative requirements under the cloak of compliance measures.
This data can’t be ignored in the climate of severe teacher shortages. Issues of workload management have taken a prominent place in the union’s Hear Our Voice campaign, and we have called for a mechanism to monitor, evaluate and streamline processes arising from constant educational change and reform.
In short, it is essential to restore the legitimate voice of the teacher in professional discourse and debate.
Although SCS had initially entertained a form of words within a revised Work Practices Agreement (WPA) to enhance this dialogue at system and workplace level, it has preferred to engage with the union on a wide range of workload issues through working parties.
The working parties have investigated areas such as programming requirements and registration of work; teacher accreditation and registration measures, including the Performing Growth in Action Plan (PGIA) process; support for early career teachers and measures to address teacher shortages and retention strategies; new curriculum reform and implementation and compliance requirements for major undertakings like the Nationally Consistent Collection of Data (NCCD) or school registration processes for NESA.
Discussions have been productive, while progress has been slow, with small incremental improvements such as streamlined template/model programming documents for use across the system and providing further release time for implementation of new curriculum and enhanced release time support for early career teachers and their mentors.
Further progress in relation to these matters will hopefully gain some momentum with the interim arrangements now in place for the current industrial dispute with Catholic employers.
For 2023 and beyond, the union is keen to monitor the effective use of the three additional pupil-free days provided to schools for implementation of the curriculum and the management of current workload demands as appropriate, in addition to the recalibration of any additional release time provided above the two hours a week of professional planning time (PPT).
We will be reporting on the ongoing discussions with SCS relating to workload management in future publications.
Liam Griffiths Organising Coordinator