On raising the status of the profession

Be careful what you wish for

Photo by Jon Lanzieri on Unsplash

This article originally appeared on Education HQ.

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I tend to think of jobs as falling into one of two categories: Ones where you have to shower after work, and ones where you don’t. From experience, I can tell you that the former tend to be difficult and low-paid; the only way to make more money is to work more hours. Teaching falls into the second category, but I think it’s the most difficult job in this group.

I was once told that the teaching year is a marathon and not a sprint. But what I think now is that it’s four sprints within a marathon! Any runner will tell you that this is a recipe for injury, most often psychological in this belaboured metaphor. The profession certainly has its problems, and addressing these is one key way to raise the status and perception of the profession. But if we move towards a more transactional and rigid way of working, perhaps we need to ask ourselves what we’re giving up.

There have been some genuine workload reforms in New South Wales where I live and teach. I support early career teachers through accreditation, the process through which teachers document their efficacy and receive their first big pay bump. I can tell you that with workload reforms, a job that took me three weeks nine years ago now takes a maximum of three days. Also, teachers in New South Wales have received a decent pay rise, which is still not enough money to live in Sydney, but who can afford to live in Sydney anyway?

Some things seem to be out of the reach of reform efforts, which continue to impact the attractiveness of the profession. Teachers are increasingly reporting the role-creep that comes with student wellbeing issues, student behaviour, and basically the trend towards schools taking the place of every community institution and parenting responsibility, from ethics education and consent, to boundaries placed on technology. And it’s worse for principals.

You would think that in the age of AI, teacher workload would be meaningfully reduced. Innumerable man-hours are spent writing reports that are still in most cases written by humans, which parents may or may not read. Some schools have moved towards reducing workload in this area and one school I know has abolished semester and yearly reports in favour of live reporting. It’s unfortunate that the risk vs return profile of edtech means that you won’t see much real innovation in this space, like we do in other areas of technology.

Despite increasing workload, many teachers keep holding onto practices that make them feel dedicated, effective, and creative, and support their teacher identity. For example, creating learning materials from scratch, and writing long letters to students about their progress (AKA individual marking), are not supported by the evidence, but teachers pour untold hours of their lives into these activities. There’s much hand-wringing about whether this deprofessionalizes teachers, but ultimately, it’s a choice—no one is forcing teachers to use ready-made, expert-created materials to lighten their load, or to create their own, for that matter.

On top of this, the profession suffers from a lack of flexibility when it comes to teaching itself. COVID-19 hardly transformed teaching and learning, as much as some hoped it would. It would be nice if students were motivated enough to learn at home, but as we discovered in the pandemic, they’re not. When we complicate this with students with disabilities, there is very little chance that the online school will take off for anyone other than those with home environments conducive to online and independent learning, who may already be partaking of online learning in the form of multiple tutors – in other words, the rich get richer.

Some schools (especially independent schools) are moving towards more flexible work, for example teachers coming in later and leaving earlier if they’re not in class, or middle leaders doing some tasks at home. But this can lead to a lack of collegiality when it comes to shared planning, and conversations about assessment. Some teachers bemoan the lack of shared planning time in their timetables, but then come in late and leave early. I feel the need to include a #notallteachers.

Increasingly, teachers are asking for more term time and the state system in NSW has handed over more pupil free days to plan. But are teachers double dipping by asking schools and families to provide yet more non-teaching time? Some see holidays as just non-term time, where we have three months of the year to holiday, binge-watch, bed-rot or, you know, plan curriculum. Perhaps this is the flexibility that’s on offer. There are often comparisons made between teaching and other professions, which are perhaps more attractive to graduates because of flexible work. But we do partake of WFH – for several months of the working year.

If things continue in this transactional fashion, the profession risks becoming more akin to the gig economy, the Uber Eats driver who needs to deliver more burgers to earn more. When we’re tracking meeting hours, tallying camps and receiving 12 weeks of holidays (ahem…non-term time), the profession becomes wageified. In other words, the concept of salary – and the professional status it conveys – becomes meaningless.

Nobody said teaching would be easy. Yes, things could be better. But we should think carefully about what we might be giving up when we start working by the clock rather than as the salaried professionals we are.