Teacher, Reader's Comment, Are our teachers making the grade?, Jewel Topsfield

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Teacher, Reader's Comment, Are our teachers making the grade?, Jewel Topsfield, Education Editor, The Age, 18 August 2012: http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/are-our-teachers-making-the-grade-20120817-24dzs.html Historical link preserved from the original page.

Teachers become ill because parents send sick children to school.

The critical reasons for the low status of teachers are Stress and workload.

Teaching consistently rates in the top 5 most stressful jobs in occupational surveys, due to many factors, including conflict with students and parents, the challenges of teaching students with learning difficulties, from refugee backgrounds, or from broken homes, increasing accountability demands, administration and professional development requirements, and the hours of unpaid overtime that are inherently part of the job.

On top of this, teachers often get more frequent illnesses due to stress and the fact that parents often send their kids to school no matter how ill they are.

It is little wonder the attrition rate from the profession is so high around the 5-6 year mark.