The 2025 State of our Schools survey identified workload, a lack of respect for teachers and burnout as the key reasons why 84 per cent of respondents had considered quitting the profession in the past four years.

The SSTUWA is taking action to start a campaign on respect. We need high-level government support to tackle workload.

That is why it is so significant that the Minister for Education Sabine Winton has given a personal commitment to tackling workload issues.

Words are fine but this Minister has also acted. We have a new chair of the Ministerial Workload Taskforce in Emeritus Professor Colleen Hayward. We welcome Prof. Hayward’s appointment to this role given her extensive knowledge and experience in education.

The taskforce was a direct result of the message you sent on 23 April 2024 when you joined 12,000 of your colleagues across WA in demanding action on workload as part of the new General Agreement (GA).

In addition, the Minister has written to school leaders and teachers confirming her determination to tackle key workload issues including complex behaviour, small group tuition and documented planning. All of these inclusions in the GA are a direct result of your efforts.

The Minister also announced a new approach to professional learning (PL). Members tell us that in some cases PL is imposed without consultation, or is unsuitable to the student or the teacher’s needs.

We welcome this recognition of significant issues and look forward to working with the Minister to deliver tangible results. You can read the Minister’s letter here.

We also welcome the state budget, which contained funding for a number of election pledges secured by the SSTUWA. Evidence-based requests, drawing on Facing the Facts, have seen significant investment in public education. Initiatives such as the first tranche of rolling out new air conditioning in schools and investment in GROH are important and are a great start. We will continue to seek delivery of existing promises and the speeding up of the delivery of full funding.