Our Enterprise Agreement already has some of the strongest workload protections available. However, workloads continue to come under pressure due to staff shortages, under-resourcing and pressure to do non-teaching work.
The new agreement will build on an already strong base of workload protections with substantive measures like additional pupil-free days and the investment of millions of dollars in centralising building services.
For the first time, our agreement will recognise that “release” time is required for teachers to plan and prepare, reducing the amount of time in which teachers and school leaders can be directed towards administrative and non-teaching activities.
Most importantly, we will continue to reduce workloads as the agreement is implemented. The Sustainable Workload Management Committee (SWMC) will work to reduce system-level workload over the life of the agreement. It will include representatives from the employer, the union and every sector and category of employee.
The primary focus of the SWMC will be on ensuring that teachers and school leaders are able to spend their time on teaching and learning, and that appropriate support is provided so that other duties can be passed on to more appropriate staff or referred to the Education Support Office.
Some of the workload issues that the Sustainable Workload Management Committee will be asked to consider include:
- Workload associated with additional student need (such as OVRAs, ILPs and PBSPs)
- School administration tasks that can be centrally-managed or provided through system-level contracts
- The effectiveness of existing ICT systems, such as Riskman and Sentral
- Administrative tasks for school psychologists that can be eliminated, streamlined or completed by other staff
- Measures to ensure that community expectations of schools are reasonable.