A paradigm shift

What you need to know

+ The McKinsey approach to management has significantly contributed to educator workload

+ Chief Executive Professor Martin Westwell has signaled a move away from the McKinsey ethos

+ The Department must go further to ensure educators are no longer relied upon to volunteer thousands of hours of unpaid time to complete their work

I recently visited several schools and preschools across the state as part of our enterprise bargaining campaign.

It’s clear to me that members continue to be stretched to breaking point. Educators are struggling to stay on top of unsustainable workloads, with work bleeding more and more into time that was once reserved for loved ones and looking after health and wellbeing.

The primary cause of this excessive workload is an unrelenting demand for data, a demand which cannibalises educators’ non-instruction time. Driven by a dedication to students, educators are taking home planning, programming, marking, assessment, and reporting that should be completed during the working day. The Department could not function without your unpaid goodwill. It’s time for that to change.

Your increased workload is a direct result of bureaucratic leadership who, without a background in education, have been directed by multinational education consultants McKinsey & Company. McKinsey’s global MO is to significantly increase accountability measures, attempting to reduce the measure of a site’s success down to a single number. At the heart of this ethos is a lack of trust in educators; a view that teachers are a problem to be managed. McKinsey has dominated our education landscape for almost a decade. Yet NAPLAN results, the Department’s own measure for success, continue to show students’ literacy, reading, and numeracy plateauing since its inception.

It was heartening to hear Chief Executive Professor Martin Westwell signal a shift from the failed measures of the past when he spoke at AEU Branch Council in March. Sound educational concepts, such as acknowledging student voice, valuing student engagement, and prioritising student wellbeing, are coming to the fore under new leadership. Inherent to this model is trust in educators’ professional judgement, and in your ability to understand, engage, and develop learning programs for your students.

I am hopeful that this paradigm shift will lessen the administrative burden and put us on a new path. However, the ongoing expectation to differentiate through individual learning plans continues to fall on educators. Working conditions must be reshaped to reflect the current state of our profession. The demands on educators have radically changed, while the provisions made to educators have remained stagnant.

Your work must be able to be completed within the working day. Educators must no longer be forced to volunteer thousands of hours of unpaid time each year. Without urgent action, the system will continue to lose quality educators and students will miss out. It’s going to take bold change to address the crisis before us, so that South Australian public education can flourish.

ANDREW GOHL, BRANCH PRESIDENT, AEU SA