Just read this article on teacher workloads , and I had some things to say about it. While it’s painfully accurate on how current workloads are so crushing, its proposed solution is far too minor. According to the Victorian study it mentions, teachers work an average of 53 hours a week and graduate teachers an average of 60 hours – this is not remediable with a modest pay rise.
Instead, this is an argument to hire 50% more teachers and distribute the workload evenly, even if that means restructuring/normalising job-sharing in primary schools. There’s tons of new grads who can’t find jobs and you probably wouldn’t have the insane levels of teacher burnout they talk about (half of all teachers spend less than five years in the profession) if workloads were only two-thirds the level they are today. Maybe we could also rejig our priorities to put less emphasis on assessment and more emphasis on actual teaching and learning, while we’re at it. But no, let’s keep pretending that all problems can be fixed just by throwing money at them, instead 🤷🏻♀️
