South Australian teachers are facing exhaustion and fatigue because of COVID-related staff shortages, especially in regional areas, the education union says.
The Australian Education Union's SA branch said there were about 800 teaching staff absent for COVID-related reasons on a recent school day.
Branch president Andrew Gohl said apart from shortages, teachers were also grappling with constantly changing learning models and fluctuating attendance.
"Teachers are consistently adjusting for those students who are coming back into the class after an absence, and adjusting for those students who are going to be away for a period of time as well," he said.
"In addition to that of course, they've also been picking up relief lessons from their colleagues who are absent for COVID reasons."
Non-essential activities dropped
The Department for Education has instructed schools to postpone non-essential activities for the remaining three weeks of term, including camps, carnivals, parent-teacher interviews and presentations.
"That's a kind of welcome, progressive action."
He said despite there being about 4,000 temporary relief teachers about South Australia, access to them in regional areas was already limited.
"That means that existing staff who are on deck are picking up relief lessons during times when they would normally not be teaching, in times when they would normally be doing their marking, preparation, programming, planning, assessment and reporting," Mr Gohle said.
"Some towns have a reasonable supply of temporary relief teachers during normal times, however at this time when we have dozens of teachers that might be away from a particular site in a day there are very few towns in South Australia that will have like 12 relief teachers, for example."
Mandated teaching loads were routinely being exceeded by teachers being called in to relieve colleagues, he said.
"I hope one of the outcomes of this is a recognition that permanent relieving teachers are an important adjunct to supporting schools, and hopefully there'll be further discussions about increasing those in the immediate future."
Unvaccinated teachers won't ease shortage
Unvaccinated teachers and school staff were permitted to return to work on Thursday.
Education department chief executive Rick Persse told ABC Radio Adelaide that would allow 83 teaching staff back in the classroom, which "doesn't move the dial".
He said 23 schools had implemented a "circuit breaker" to control COVID infections, moving some classes online.
"It might be an individual class, it might be two class where we've flipped to remote learning to have that circuit breaker.
