Some Canberra students are spending up to half a day a week with minimal supervision as schools struggle with "extreme" levels of staff absences in Term 2.
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Australian Education Union ACT branch president Angela Burroughs said it was almost impossible to get relief teachers to fill in for sick staff.
"It's still extreme. But the difficulty is that it's not evenly spread. Some schools are facing critical staffing situations, others fully staffed," Ms Burroughs said.
"That's a real challenge for us as a system when there's this incredible inconsistency in terms of being able to meet the staffing requirements of the system."
As of Friday, there were 668 active casual teachers registered in the Education Directorate's casual booking system, a directorate spokesman said.
Ms Burroughs said one day recently only six relief teachers were available in the central relief teacher pool for all 91 public schools.
The Education director general Katy Haire sent a letter to families at the beginning of Term 2 warning them a higher number of staff would be away because of seasonal illnesses in the colder months.
Parents were told schools may need to adjust timetables, cancel extracurricular activities, camps and excursions and rely on online teaching resources.
Ms Burroughs said some schools were putting larger groups of students together for independent study instead of regular classes.
"When staffing shortages have been ongoing and extreme and there's just not the capacity to fully staff all of the lessons all of the time, timetable changes have been made," she said.
"These are typically occurring in high schools or colleges, where children can work independently and with minimal supervision you can accommodate a larger group of students."
Ms Burroughs said while more teachers were taking leave, including sick leave and long service leave, the cause of the problem was an underlying shortage of qualified teachers.
"We sometimes fall into the trap that the challenges that the schooling system across Australia is facing is a product of COVID. It's actually a product of poor planning."
![Australian Education Union ACT branch president Angela Burroughs said some schools were still suffering from extreme levels of staff shortages. Picture by Elesa Kurtz Australian Education Union ACT branch president Angela Burroughs said some schools were still suffering from extreme levels of staff shortages. Picture by Elesa Kurtz](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/33pRA5ArzT57tWtt8VHHenS/f375b1c2-e8e7-4094-b2d8-7f8cc4b5baf0.jpg/r0_122_3930_2332_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
A directorate spokesman said schools were using a variety of ways to deal with the staffing pressures.
"This can include the use of inbuilt or external relief, changes to class offerings and scheduling, learning content from the Directorate, short-term collapsing of classes, as well as other mechanisms," the spokesman said.
"From time to time schools may need to use these or other methods of managing staffing arrangements, and these methods have been available to schools since well before the COVID-19 pandemic."
The spokesman said there was a national shortage of teachers and the directorate was taking action to address the problem in the ACT.
Retired teachers are being enticed back into service through new provisions in the enterprise agreement for ACT public school teachers.
If retired teachers return to work, they can have their teacher registration and working with vulnerable people card fees reimbursed, be paid for two professional development days per year and be paid up to $524 per day.
Final year teaching students can register for the permit to teach program which allows them to work in understaffed schools while getting on-the-job mentoring.
Last year 61 students were registered for a permit to teach in ACT public schools. The program began with University of Canberra and Australian Catholic University and was expanded to include Charles Sturt University this year.
Ms Burroughs said parents and carers needed to be understanding during Term 2, a term when the mid-year reports were due.
"Remember that teachers are human beings too and they're doing everything they can to meet the needs of students, but they can't be superhuman all the time."