Thousands of teachers feel burdened with managing student behaviour in the classroom. Source: Max Fischer, Pexels.
According to a recent survey, dealing with student behaviour and reporting incidents has taken the biggest toll on Queensland state school teachers’ workloads.
In the survey, the Queensland education department asked teachers and principals to record the main issue affecting the time and ability to educate students.
Half the responses — 50.2 per cent — identified student behaviour and reporting incidents, 35.3 per cent said responding to parents, 29.4 per cent said data collection and administration, 21.4 per cent said meetings, and 15.5 per cent said curriculum planning.
School staff reported that “stopping teaching or working to deal with the behaviour of students”, and reporting behaviour incidents was very time-consuming.
Education Minister Di Farmer said part of the issue was that “teachers are required to record even minor behaviour incidents”.
“So, if each of those took up to 15 minutes, the number of hours per school that has taken up, just recording just those incidents, let alone anything else, is actually quite significant,” she said.
The most common types of student incidents are related to physical aggression, with almost 20,000 cases being reported.
“I think that if the average person knew what kinds of physical and verbal abuse teachers put up with every single day, they would actually fall off their chair,” said Farmer.
“That is simply unacceptable.”
A Queensland teacher, who requested anonymity, said that she has dealt with physical aggression from students throughout her career, forcing her to develop a “thick skin”.
“I have been hit, I have been kicked, I have had a child bite my arm, swearing, you name it, it’s happened,” she said.
“You feel as though you can’t help the child in the way that you are trained to help them, which is to educate them.”
Apart from physical aggression from students, school staff were also experiencing physical aggression from parents, which made their jobs twice as hard.
Queensland Teachers’ Union general secretary Kate Ruttiman said that teachers and principals occasionally experienced threats from parents who were violent and aggressive.
Education Minister Farmer reassured that the department was working on campaigns that would make “it clear that occupational violence is just simply not acceptable by students or from parents”.
The state education department is developing a new strategy to reduce teachers’ workload, according to Farmer.
Schools will also no longer be required to report minor incidents starting from next term.
