Department of Education plays down teacher shortages concerns as COVID hits schools

This is not a surprise and both the NSW government and Department of Education are bracing for more over the coming weeks throughout the state.

Plans are also in place to bring in retired teachers to replace those teachers who get COVID-19 and have to isolate.

NSW Teachers Federation's Wollongong organiser Duncan McDonald is aware of this but said teachers were bracing for the already crippling teacher shortages to get worse.

Read more: Illawarra teachers bracing for disruptive start to school year

"Our schools are saying the teacher shortages are getting worse. That seems to be the pressing priority at the moment. Their number one concern is how are they going to cover the classes when teachers get sick," Mr McDonald said.

"They are already struggling to identify who will be available in the next weeks ahead as this latest [COVID] wave is going to be very disruptive.

"It's expected that there will be a lot of teachers on sick leave and certainly there is no casual relief workforce to call upon.

"Even outside of the pandemic, they were already having trouble getting casual teachers pre-pandemic."

Mr McDonald said teachers had been furious after they were included in a state government order stating teachers did not need to isolate even if one of their household had COVID.

The Department of Education has since retracted this and teachers are now encouraged to isolate should this occur.

Mr McDonald said poor ventilation and primary school students struggling with mask wearing, were also of concern for teachers.

"Two days were particularly hot and humid this week. This was a real problem at a high school in our region which has no air-conditioning in seven rooms and its gym. There were also no air purifiers. The comfort levels for kids and staff was atrocious," he said.

"There were also issues at a primary school in south Illawarra. The school had no air purifiers at all even though they were told they would have some this week.

"This is one of the reasons why the majority of calls to the union have been around students struggling with mask wearing and the ventilation, the air quality.

"It is very hard for teachers to feel comfortable and confident that they've got good air quality when there is actually no monitoring device that they can use inside the school."

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A Department of Education spokesperson said it had been a smooth start to the 2022 school year, adding all schools were open.

In relation to teacher shortages, the department had undertaken thorough workforce planning to ensure sufficient staff were available to backfill positions if required.

"Guidelines have been issued to all schools to assist in backfill arrangements, and the Department has deployed an extremely limited amount of its contingent workforce into schools to fill positions were required."

Requests asking how many Illawarra students and teachers were off sick because of COVID were not answered, with the department stating it did not report on COVID case numbers or RAT results.

The spokesperson did however say the department was committed to keeping schools open and fully operational, while prioritising the safety and wellbeing of students and school staff.

This included running a learning-from-home hub on its website, aimed at students, parents and families.

"This hub provides age-appropriate learning material for all stages of the NSW curriculum for students to use in self-paced learning at home or with support from their parents.

"All students and families are able to access the learning material," the spokesperson said.

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