Our State of our Schools survey 2025 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. This is a welcome appointment as, to be frank, the taskforce was in danger of becoming tangled in red tape rather than removing it for teachers.

That was extremely concerning as this 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). You fought for it and wanted it to deliver. Now it can.

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 are areas of extreme frustration for teachers and their inclusion in the GA are a direct result of your efforts.

Significantly the Minister also announced a new approach to professional learning (PL). Members constantly tell us that in many cases PL is imposed without any consultation. Often it is unsuitable, delivered badly and requires data collection that adds to workload with no visible benefit to staff or students.