Alan Spackman, Reader's Comment, A little respect: attracting top teachers is no

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Alan Spackman, Reader's Comment, A little respect: attracting top teachers is not rocket science, Jane Caro, The Drum, Opinion, ABC, 4 October 2012: http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4293550.html Historical link preserved from the original page.

Some teachers may seem to have a light workload - but not new graduates working in difficult schools.

I am an escaped teacher.

Teaching pays fresh graduates reasonably, but pays extremely poorly in comparison to other career options if the teacher is numerate.

This may not be that obvious to a 21 year old graduate, but is extremely obvious a few years later when numerate friends from uni have lifestyles, suburbs, cars and spouses that teachers could never afford.

Some teaching jobs are far easier than other teaching jobs.

If a teacher works as a full time relief teacher with the ability to handball/hospital pass (depending on state) all problems to somebody else, with no need to write reports and no need to plan lessons, then full time teaching is less than 30 hours per week.

Other teachers have taught very similar content for the past several years in the same schools.

If these teachers have organised assessments to be very easy to mark and if they find reports very easy to write when copying and pasting comments from similar students in prior years, they may also work under 40 hours per week.

These situations are totally different from those facing fresh graduates in difficult schools.

As really learning how to teach takes 5 to 10 years on the job, which is similar to most trades, it may be very sensible if all teachers only had a 0.8 load for their first few years of full time teaching.