Victorians studying to become secondary school teachers will have their degrees paid by the state government, in an effort to fill “crippling” staff shortages in the sector.
The premier, Daniel Andrews, announced a $229m workforce package on Tuesday, just days after principals, teachers and other school staff held a protest on the steps of state parliament.
The package includes $93m to fund scholarships for students who enrol in teaching degrees in 2024 and 2025 and then go on to work in government secondary schools for at least two years.
Andrews said the scheme – modelled on the government’s earlier commitment to fund nursing and midwifery degrees – would benefit about 4,000 future teachers each year.
“They will be the best part of $18,000 better off for an undergraduate [student] and $9,000 for [a] postgraduate,” he said. “That’s money in your pocket. It helps with cost of living or you can use it to pay your Hecs debt. It gets paid to you – you can use it for whatever you choose to use it.”
Andrews said the scholarships will be targeted at boosting the number of teachers in secondary schools, which were experiencing the most “acute” staff shortages.
Other aspects of the package – including $95.7m to support and retain graduate teachers, $27m to incentivise teachers to take up rural, remote and otherwise “hard-to-staff” positions; and $13.9m to support a trial of employment-based degrees for undergraduates – seek to address staffing issues at primary and secondary schools.
Andrews said the government has recruited 5,000 teachers since 2020, which he claims is more than any other state.
“Of course we have to do more and that’s what today is all about … build[ing] for the future,” he said.
“As we open new schools and expand and get even more parents choosing state schools, we’re going to need more teachers and that’s exactly why we’re investing in this profession.”
He denied the package was directly in response to a protest held by the Victorian branch of the Australian Education Union (AEU) outside state parliament on Friday over the government’s “inaction on crippling teacher shortages”.
“No one needed to protest at parliament. No one needed to put ads in the paper,” Andrews said. “Every day that we’ve been in office we have invested in state schools. It’s just a fact.”
The union said advertised vacancies in public schools had “reached unprecedented levels”, with daily advertised jobs reaching 2,600 in the first week of September.
The union’s Victorian president, Meredith Peace, also recently wrote to the premier and the state’s education minister to request retention payments for existing teachers, reduced workloads and new measures to ensure an adequate supply of new staff.
In a statement, the AEU’s Victorian deputy president, Justin Mullaly, said the government’s commitment was an “important and positive step in the right direction” but more needed to be done to support existing teachers.
“Right now school staff are stretched covering gaps because of teacher shortages – they are going above and beyond to ensure students have access to the learning programs they need,” Mullaly said.
“This effort is taking a toll causing too many to become burnt out, take extended leave, or leave the profession altogether.
“Retention payments are one of the many solutions the government can implement now to … encourage them to stay.”
The state’s opposition leader, John Pesutto, said: “Andrews wants a pat on the back for putting a Band-Aid on a crisis his government has created”.
