Some Canberra schools to be understaffed at start of 2023 school year

The union representing ACT public school teachers has heard from principals who were between five and eight staff members short at the end of the 2022 school year.

Australian Education Union ACT branch secretary Angela Burroughs said school leaders faced the prospect of spending their annual leave period trying to find staff.

"What they telling us is that they're not expecting to have a holiday," Ms Burroughs said.

Ms Burroughs said principals were scanning Facebook groups where teachers discuss how to get recruited in different states and territories.

"Principals are looking at that out of desperation to try and fill vacancies."

Executive group manager of business services David Matthews said in the last week of Term 4, 45 teaching positions remained vacant with 50 people in the pool of applicants.

He expected fewer than 30 vacancies at the start of Term 1, 2023, which he said was equivalent to the level of vacancies at the start of 2022.

"We recognise that there will be ongoing challenges with securing enough teachers here in ACT public schools and indeed with the independent and Catholic sectors here in Canberra, and nationally," Mr Matthews said.

"We've worked extremely hard to make sure that we are as fully staffed as we can possibly be and at over 99 per cent of positions filled we will be in a better position than I would say all other jurisdictions."

He said the directorate would be working to match candidates with each school's requirements and that principals would not be required to spend time on recruitment during the summer break.

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Student teachers in their final year of university studies will be allowed to apply for a permit to teach in an attempt to boost the workforce.

Mr Matthews said the students would be able to work part-time from the start of their final year, rather than after completing their final placement, with support from the school leadership and their university.

"We want them to have a long and successful career in teaching and getting them off on the right foot is a really critical part which is why we've taken a lot of care and we certainly won't be rushing any training teachers into the classroom that we we believe are not ready to be there," he said.

The staff shortages are not being evenly felt across the public education system.

Schools in outer suburbs with higher levels of disadvantage struggle to attract and retain staff.

A school leader in the ACT public school system, who did not wish to be named, told The Canberra Times that some schools would not be staffed properly in the new year.

"Especially schools that are in geographical areas that make it harder for staff to get to or with a well-known higher proportion of students with complex needs, it's really, really hard to staff those schools and they'll probably go into next year understaffed. That's the reality of the situation," they said.

Teachers in certain specialities, including science, maths, disability education and foreign languages, are also more difficult to recruit.

Ms Burroughs said she could "absolutely guarantee" that teachers would be teaching outside of their specialities in the new year, but Mr Matthews said it would not be a larger number than previous years.

"It is not a new thing that some teachers teach outside directly their area of expertise. We'll absolutely be seeking to minimise that," Mr Matthews said.

Ms Burroughs said the teacher shortage pre-dated the pandemic, however COVID-19 and other illnesses led to high numbers of staff absences continuing in Term 4. One day a principal reported 25 staff absent from their school.

She said schools were under pressure to keep their doors open at any cost this term, contributing to the "absolute fatigue" being felt by school staff.

A national teacher workforce action plan was released following a meeting of education ministers in December.

It contains a suite of strategies including prioritising teachers for visa applications, making more teaching places available at universities, reducing unnecessary workload and launching a targeted national campaign to raise the status and value of teachers.

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