Stressed teachers quitting over high workload, Australian Education Union report reveals

Teachers are considering leaving their profession as they feel stressed and overworked due to the longer working hours than ever before.

73% out of 2000 teachers believe that during the past year, there was a noticeable increase in their workload; a survey done by a major national university.

There are more than ever demands for teachers to work on weekends and outside classroom hours. More than 2/3rd of the teachers are working more than 46 hours a week regularly.

Female teachers are most likely working full time long hours outside their classroom commitments, making almost 1/4th of all the teachers working more than 55 hours a week.

According to ‘State of Our Schools’ report by the Australian Education Union 2015, the main reason behind the vast majority of teachers considering leaving this profession was because they were feeling overworked.

According to Correna Haythorpe, the AEU’s federal president, the issue of the increasing work pressure being faced by the classroom teachers had to be addressed.

She told News Corp Australia that teachers in public schools are not getting resources to back them up as more and more is being expected of them.

“Teachers generally report a high-level of satisfaction with their jobs, and see teaching as a long-term career, but the increasing workload is an issue that we need to address.”

According to Ms Haythorpe, the school enrolments are going to boom over the next decade, and so will the demand for experienced and high performing teachers.

According to a survey of teachers, two third of them who were considering to change their career seriously, said that the main influence for the need to leave their profession was work load.

28% of teachers intending to change their profession decided so because of their salaries and working conditions, whereas 10% of the experienced teachers wanted to leave because of better professional opportunities.

Source: News.com.au