Involving almost 20,000 NSW teachers, the survey revealed that only 15 per cent had enough time for lesson planning, fewer than one in ten have time to collaborate with colleagues and just 7 per cent have adequate time for curriculum programming.

Ninety-five per cent of the surveyed teachers cited “emotional/physical fatigue” as the main consequence of their insufficient time issues.

The survey findings are underpinning a NSW Teachers Federation push for extra hours of paid out-of-classroom prep time, which will involve meeting with members, parents, and politicians across the state. 

The union will present evidence from teachers included in the survey, who say they are being stretched beyond capacity, and will hear the concerns of local communities.

NSWTF president Henry Rajendra said it was not only teachers sounding the alarm. 

“Parents know this is a serious problem and want it fixed so that their kids get a teacher who has had the time to plan for the needs of their students,” he said.

Preparation hours for the state’s primary teachers have not increased since the 1980s and there has been no change for secondary teachers since the 1950s.

That’s despite rapid advances in technology, policy and curriculum changes, and more students with disabilities making modern classrooms more complex to manage, according to a 2021 Gallup Inquiry. 

Chaired by former WA Premier Dr Geoff Gallop, that inquiry recommended boosting the time teachers have to prepare lessons and collaborate with colleagues by two hours.

While applauding the “meaningful progress” on teacher pay and workforce shortages, NSWTF president Henry Rajendra says “it’s time [for the Government] to finish the job and commit to the additional preparation time teachers desperately need”.

NSW Minister for Education and Early Learning Prue Car said a dramatic increase in teacher numbers would be needed to provide any increase in preparation time.

“For the Department of Education to provide widespread release time, it would require significantly more teachers and create vacancies just as the sector recovers from the chronic teacher shortage that exploded under the Liberals and Nationals’ wages cap,” she said in a statement.

Car said the NSW Government had made progress in raising teacher pay, lightening staff workloads and addressing workforce shortages.

“We know there is more work to do, and we’ll continue to listen to our hard-working, dedicated teachers as we support them in doing what they do best – teaching kids in the classroom,” she said.

Rajendra applauded the “meaningful progress” on teacher pay and workforce shortages, currently at their lowest levels in more than a decade.

“Now it’s time to finish the job and commit to the additional preparation time teachers desperately need,” he said.

Car, meanwhile, has announced plans to roll out a ‘ground breaking’ anti-bullying framework that will include the axing of contentious current zero-tolerance policies involving suspension and expulsion, to be replaced by an approach prioritising wellbeing.

This will involve the counselling of bullies rather than punishing them, and bullied students being given their own personal safety plan.

“The program will involve punishment if everything else has been tried, but really it focusses on prevention and making sure that we’re explicitly teaching our young people how to emotionally regulate,” Car told breakfast TV show Sunrise yesterday.

“International evidence shows that bullying actually peaks unfortunately at the age of 10, so a lot of the work in the classroom will be done around that age to ensure kids know how to deal with a range of emotions and that we can encourage a sense of belonging as well in that age group, so that we can try to prevent the bullying to start with.” 

Car said that every school, in order to keep its registration under NESA, will be required to work within the new framework.

“So every child that complains about being bullied, that complaint will have to be actioned within two days, in a form of triaging.

“It’s not a case of supporting bullies over the bullied children, it’s about taking steps to avoid the bullying in the first place.”

Speaking on the same program in October, Federal Minister for Education, Jason Clare, announced that schools will have two days to respond to a bullying complaint or incident under a new $10 million national plan to address the worsening problem.

Agreed to by state and territory education ministers, the plan comes following the Federal Government’s Anti-Bullying Rapid Review which attracted 1700 submissions from educators, parents and students as it sought to examine current procedures in schools and identify best practices to tackle bullying. 

ACU’s Dr Matthew White followed the review closely and said the two-day response policy was a good move, given that one of the first things to deteriorate when reports or instances of bullying take place is the trust between schools and parents. 

“Parents expect that when they send their kids to school that they’re going to be safe and that they’re not going to be prone to bullying,” the inclusive education expert told EducationHQ last year. 

“And so when they do get a call from school, or they find out at home – which is even worse, and the school doesn’t make them aware that there has been a case of bullying – it sort of triggers this erosion of trust between schools and parents.”

“We know definitely in the research that a protective factor for students against bullying is belongingness and connectedness…” White said. 

(with AAP)