Dora Houpis
Many Brimbank schools are short of teachers, compounded by COVID-19 and other illnesses, in the face of an unprecedented nationwide teacher shortage.
Local parents, who wanted to remain anonymous, last week contacted the Star Weekly, concerned about teacher shortages across local schools.
Many schools contacted by the Star Weekly last week were not available for comment.
But, Keilor Downs College principal Linda Maxwell said her school had gone through the year well and was not one of the many local schools experiencing staff shortages.
“We started the year fully staffed so we didn’t have any vacancies,” she said.
“We were very lucky. We had a long run.”
Ms Maxwell said that this wasn’t the case with other schools in the area who started the year with vacancies which was compounded by staff getting sick, including with COVID-19.
She said her school in Odessa Ave, Keilor Downs, had 1300 students and would be down up to six staff “on a worse day”.
Ms Maxwell said that wasn’t the case with other schools.
She said some local schools could be down 20 or 30 staff necessitating up to five classes being combined and even principals and assistant principals teaching classes.
Ms Maxwell said there was no easy solution to the teacher shortage, but her school was lucky it had teachers.
She said two fourth-year teaching students had joined the school, some other teachers had taken on extra days and some teachers on leave had come back early to resume teaching.
Federal Government modelling has suggested that teacher shortages could worsen, with the demand for secondary teachers to exceed the supply of new graduates by about 4,100, between 2021 to 2025.
Federal and state ministers met two weeks ago to discuss the teacher shortage.
A two-day “Jobs and Skills Summit” will be held in Canberra, on Thursday, September 1.
