“I can’t replace the sick staff because there are no casualties. I have to put all the students in a class or cancel the school completely. “
The president of the Federation of Teachers, Angelo Gavrielatos, said that teachers had no choice but to strike with the poor conditions that cause the shortage of teachers.
“We cannot accept the shortage of paralyzing teachers and how they are costing our children their opportunities to learn, costing them their future,” he said. “We can’t fix the shortage without fixing wages and the workload problem.”
Ashfield Public School teacher Gabriella McGrath said teachers were slowly draining their passion.
“When I started teaching in 2018, I knew not everything would be easy, but at least I thought it would be about kids and the classroom,” he said.
“Four years later and I’m coming to a different reality. We often feel like administrators who only spend a few lucky hours with their children every day.
“It seems that the government does not care that, as young teachers, we lose a life with family and friends. In the evenings, when we should relax with loved ones, we sit on our laptops writing lesson plans and prepare to make sure our students have the best education possible. ”
Christine Wilkinson, president of the NSW / ACT Independent Education Union branch and a professor at St Joseph’s Catholic College in East Gosford, said the Catholic system was broken.
“Teachers are drowning in a sea of ever-increasing workloads,” he said. “The shortage of occasional teachers is putting enormous pressure and strain on teachers who are being asked to take additional classes on a daily basis, sometimes … to care for students in overcrowded classrooms.”
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Education Minister Sarah Mitchell said it was “deeply disappointing” that the two teachers’ unions had decided to go on strike.
“This strike is unnecessary and will cause great upheaval for working parents,” he said. “After two and a half years of learning interruptions due to COVID-19, another day out of the classroom is the last one our students need.”
Earlier this month, Prime Minister Dominic Perrottet announced that the public sector wage cap would be raised from 2.5% to 3%.
But the NSW Teachers Federation wants a salary increase of between 5 and 7.5 per cent.
Catholic employers are not subject to the limit, but they have followed the example of the public sector in teachers ’salaries.
Thursday’s teachers ’strike came during a week of industrial upheavals in NSW, with nurses and midwives quitting their jobs and rail workers limiting train services.
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