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The TAFE teaching workforce and its facilities are under extreme pressure, with complexity of students, increased enrolments and ageing facilities impacting on teaching and learning.

Australian public school teachers are spending more than $175 million of their own money each year on basic classroom supplies, exposing the personal impact of chronic underfunding of public schools, according to new data from the Australian Education Union.

On a typical school day in Australia last year, about 11 per cent of students were absent. In 2014, the figure was seven per cent.

Classrooms are becoming more diverse and more students around the world have identified special education needs.

Learning to read is a complex process. It requires children to master and integrate multiple skills, from mapping abstract symbols to the right speech sounds to understanding what all the words mean.

The Australian Education Union has welcomed new research from Monash University that exposes the extreme and often invisible emotional demands placed on Australia’s public school principals, and is calling for urgent government action to address the escalating risks to their health, safety and wellbeing.

Principals’ jobs have always been stressful, involving a constant juggle to meet the needs of students, staff and the community. But research suggests their roles are becoming more difficult and increasingly unsustainable.

Understanding your entitlements around Advanced Skills Lecturer (ASL) classifications is essential for every TAFE lecturer. Read the ASL TAFE Know Your Right information sheet here.

Late last year the Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre told us that the number of children experiencing poverty in Western Australia had doubled over the past decade.

If you are in your first five years of teaching, or are a pre-service teacher, you are eligible to be a new educator member of the SSTUWA and be supported by the union’s Growth Team with targeted visits, information, advice and training.

Private schools in WA have outspent public schools on capital works by $3.2 billion over the past decade, including $515 million in 2023 alone, exposing a widening infrastructure divide driven by the absence of ongoing Commonwealth capital funding for public schools since 2017.

Former SSTUWA General Secretary Mary Franklyn has been made a life member of the Australian Education Union in recognition of her outstanding service to the union movement and to public education. Click here to read an excerpt of the nomination speech given by SSTUWA President Matt Jarman.

*Disclaimer: in this article the term teacher is used intermittently in reference to teachers and school leaders. How often do we hear that the need to fix the teacher shortage is to show teachers more respect?

In the last issue of Western Teacher, I spoke about leadership, service and collective strength. In this issue, I want to focus on what that means in practice.

I want to thank all our members who responded to our start of term survey on teacher shortages.

Only nine per cent of Canadian students learn about climate change often in school, while 42 per cent say it’s rarely or never discussed in the classroom.

Education leaders from across Australia have written an open letter to News Corp Australia, calling on them to immediately cease the publication of misleading school league tables.

As the School Curriculum and Standards Authority updates its curricula, it is even more important for schools and teachers to take a fresh look at how they teach about the cross-curriculum priority of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Histories and Cultures, not to mention how that lines up with staff professional learning, schools plans and policies and the Aboriginal Cultural Standards Framework.

Inequality is one of the most urgent challenges facing Australian schools. For decades, governments have invested billions of dollars in schools with the promise every child should have the opportunity to succeed.

I became a member of the SSTUWA in mid-2024, inspired by the industrial action taking place prior to the new lecturers’ award being won and was then voted in as the branch representative earlier last year.