Mr MILLS - 2005-08-17
In a media release on 24 July 2005, you claimed that your strong focus on teacher retention is paying off, yet you had to recruit 63 teachers for the second semester of the current school year. This is close to double the numbers recruited for the second semester 12 months ago, and 41 more than had to be recruited two years ago. Will you admit that your focus on teacher retention is not paying off, and explain what the union is referring to as ‘an unacceptably high teacher turnover’ this year?
ANSWER
Madam Speaker, I thank the member for Blain for his question. There is no doubt that there is an upward slip in those teachers leaving the system - not that bad in the overall average if you look back over the past few years. The Northern Territory still has, whether it is the public sector overall or different areas within the public sector, what I would say is an unacceptably high level of turnover and attrition, which means, of course, government and agencies do have to go the extra yard and spend those extra dollars in recruitment.
However, in the area of retention, this government has looked very closely at the issues that we believe were driving the higher levels of attrition in the past. Some of those were conditions of service, particularly around the standard of housing in remote communities, particularly remote Aboriginal communities. There has been a lot of money put in over the last few years to upgrade those standards to bring them up to a more acceptable level and reduce one of those areas of angst over which remote teachers felt they were not getting a fair go, and leaving the system.
We still remain very competitive in recruitment as a result of the last enterprise bargaining agreement which was accepted earlier this year. As far as getting people back into the system, I believe we are standing at about a dozen vacancies across the board at the moment, out of a little over 2100 classroom teachers – not a bad level; 12 classroom teachers missing out of a little over 2100. I would love to see it that we did not have any. Last year, we were in that situation where we did not have any - except for a very short term - absences in the system over the latter part of the year. I would expect we will get there again.
We will continue to engage with the Australian Education Union and our teachers across the system. Certainly, we would not want to see this trend continue or spike up and …
Mr Mills: It is spiking up.
Mr STIRLING: … if there is a need, if there is something there in the system driving this, well, we will get on top of it very quickly and respond to it. The member is right. It is not as good as last year, which was outstanding. However, we achieved it last year, we will be achieving it again.
ANSWER
Madam Speaker, I thank the member for Blain for his question. There is no doubt that there is an upward slip in those teachers leaving the system - not that bad in the overall average if you look back over the past few years. The Northern Territory still has, whether it is the public sector overall or different areas within the public sector, what I would say is an unacceptably high level of turnover and attrition, which means, of course, government and agencies do have to go the extra yard and spend those extra dollars in recruitment.
However, in the area of retention, this government has looked very closely at the issues that we believe were driving the higher levels of attrition in the past. Some of those were conditions of service, particularly around the standard of housing in remote communities, particularly remote Aboriginal communities. There has been a lot of money put in over the last few years to upgrade those standards to bring them up to a more acceptable level and reduce one of those areas of angst over which remote teachers felt they were not getting a fair go, and leaving the system.
We still remain very competitive in recruitment as a result of the last enterprise bargaining agreement which was accepted earlier this year. As far as getting people back into the system, I believe we are standing at about a dozen vacancies across the board at the moment, out of a little over 2100 classroom teachers – not a bad level; 12 classroom teachers missing out of a little over 2100. I would love to see it that we did not have any. Last year, we were in that situation where we did not have any - except for a very short term - absences in the system over the latter part of the year. I would expect we will get there again.
We will continue to engage with the Australian Education Union and our teachers across the system. Certainly, we would not want to see this trend continue or spike up and …
Mr Mills: It is spiking up.
Mr STIRLING: … if there is a need, if there is something there in the system driving this, well, we will get on top of it very quickly and respond to it. The member is right. It is not as good as last year, which was outstanding. However, we achieved it last year, we will be achieving it again.
Last updated: 09 Aug 2016