Supporting South Australian Teachers
Wednesday 19 February
Second Reading Debate - Education and Children’s Services (Barring Notices and Other Protections) Amendment Bill 2024
Ms CLANCY (Elder) (17:18): I rise today in support of the Education and Children's Services (Barring Notices and Other Protections) Amendment Bill 2024. In the years since COVID, Australia has seen a countrywide teacher shortage. Fortunately, here in South Australia, we have implemented strategies to recruit and retain teachers across both metropolitan and regional areas.
Our state government has focused on competitive remuneration packages, enhanced support within classrooms and support for early career teachers through mentorship programs. However, research continues to indicate that most teachers are not sure if they will remain in their profession until retirement. The proportion of teachers planning to leave the profession before retirement has continued to grow from under a quarter in 2020 to more than a third now.
There are many different reasons teachers choose to leave the profession, and the reasons tend to not be very surprising. Teachers report that their jobs are becoming increasingly more demanding as the range and diversity of tasks expected of teachers continues to contribute to unsustainable workloads. As the sister of a teacher—shout-out to Mr Clancy—I understand teaching is emotionally demanding work and it is work that takes place before, between and after the school bell rings. Teachers must constantly consider the emotional needs of their students and manage behavioural challenges within their classrooms while continuing to teach.
One way we have been able to support teachers is through our mobile phone ban in public secondary schools that came into place in 2023, which has shown significant improvement in student behaviour and interactions. On the anniversary of the ban's introduction, Department for Education data showed that there had been a 63 per cent decline in critical incidents involving social media in the first two terms of last year compared with the same period in 2023 before the ban was in place. These incidents included cyberbullying, circulation of explicit materials, derogatory content being posted online and other concerning online behaviour.
The data also showed a decline in matters reported to the department centred on students not complying with the mobile phone policy or overall behaviour involving phones, along with a reduction in the incidence of violence, particularly involving kicking or punching. Changes like this benefit not just the students but school staff too. In the wake of the phone ban coming into place, principals reported immediate changes in student behaviour, with many wanting to engage in extracurricular activities or clubs in break times. Happier students take a little bit of pressure off our incredibly hardworking teachers.
Understanding the extent of teachers' work—including time spent working on weekends, doing administrative tasks, and the ever-increasing correspondence with students and families via emails and apps like Seesaw—is crucial to improving the work-life balance of South Australian teachers.
As we have all witnessed recently in the news, it is not just the behaviour of students that teachers are now having to worry about. It is incredibly disappointing that there has been a 200 per cent increase in the number of barring notices issued by government schools in South Australia, while other responses such as formal warning letters have increased by 250 per cent. Data shows approximately one-third of incidents involving the issue of a barring notice involved people who had already been warned about their behaviour.
The latest Australian Principal Occupational Health Safety and Wellbeing report found that the behaviour of some parents and caregivers is a major contributor to the stresses faced by school leaders. Parents and carers were reported by principals to be involved in bullying, cyberbullying, gossip, slander and sexual harassment. Shockingly, of those principals who reported being threatened with violence, two-thirds experienced these threats from parents and caregivers. Teachers report that these types of behaviours from parents are impacting their physical and psychological safety at work, their wellbeing and their capacity to carry out their work effectively: to teach our kids. I hear it over and over again from friends who are teachers: it is getting harder, and in large part that is more often than not because of the behaviour of the parents, not the students.
I suspect that when you picture yourself teaching, you see yourself at the front of a classroom, enthusiastically sharing knowledge and encouraging students. You do not see yourself sitting at home at night on your phone fielding abusive emails after 9 o'clock at night. Teachers are now threatened and harassed not only in their physical workplace but via email and on social media and that can happen at any time, day or night. Feedback received from leaders, teachers and support staff has included being audio or videorecorded without consent and being subjected to gossip and inappropriate online commentary.
It is clear these issues are only getting worse and action is required. The changes proposed by this bill will empower site leaders to respond to a broader range of behaviours that compromise the safety of teachers and students within school grounds.
In relation to barring notices, site leaders will now be able to issue them in a broader range of circumstances, such as if they believe a person poses a risk to the physical, emotional, psychological or wellbeing of any person on site or related premises being used by a school. This change is necessary to protect the school community at external events, such as sports days or off-campus excursions from the person issued with a barring notice.
A site leader will also be able to issue a barring notice to a person engaging in vexatious communication with staff. This is behaviour including but not limited to: an unreasonably high frequency of communication; repeatedly and deliberately ignoring reasonable requests; unreasonably diverting school resources; communications intended to cause distress or harassment; or causing a source of stress for staff members.
Expanding barring notices for vexatious communication is necessary to address inappropriate and derogatory material being published about staff online and on social media platforms. Under the current act, a police officer, teacher or school leader can direct a person to leave school premises. Under our changes, the circumstances for a direction to leave will line up with the circumstances a person can be issued with a barring notice for. On the ground, this will mean a police officer, teacher or school leader will have the authority to direct a person to leave premises being used by a school, such as a pool, sports centre or the Museum. This will enable teachers to safely conduct their students at a range of educational premises without the threat of a barred person interrupting their work.
Currently, a person who has been directed to leave is not permitted to return for 48 hours. This bill will change the time period to two business days or until the school has finished using the related premises. A person directed to leave on a Friday would previously have been able to return on the Monday morning, not giving staff the time to consider or put in place further action. Two business days will allow staff to prepare their next steps within working hours and not add to their existing after-hours workload.
It is important to note that while the circumstances under which a barring notice or direction to leave can be issued have been broadened, the threshold for using this response does remain high and therefore are relatively rare in our schools.
It is incredibly unfortunate that we have to make these provisions within the act to protect teachers and students. Schools should already be safe places and teachers should be respected, appreciated and celebrated for the incredible work they do for our children and young people.
We cannot allow teachers to continue to be harassed while doing their jobs while on school grounds or out in the community. The Malinauskas Labor government will continue to do everything we can to ease the burden on South Australian school teachers; protect them and their wellbeing and keep them in our classrooms. I commend this bill to the house.
