And we’re off! The room is packed.
Education Minister Prue Car has just joined the stage.
Car says being the state’s education minister is a privilege, and in the almost year since she took on the job she has had three main goals:
“Bringing back the trust of the teaching profession, valuing teachers [and] lifting the status of the profession, and being honest … about the challenges facing this profession and confronting them with meaningful structural change.
“These challenges were real last year, and let me be honest, they remain real now.”
She says she has spent many days visiting schools only to be met with news at the front gate that a teacher had resigned that morning. She says she has seen many teachers in tears, staff being assaulted by students, and totally exhausted.
“Words don’t even explain how burnt out they are, many in tears … this is a common occurrence.
“Many are demoralised because they can’t be the teacher they set out to be.”
She says teachers tell her again and again how they feel: gaslit.
She says teachers were told by the previous government that there was no crisis in the sector – but that did not align with what teachers were experiencing in the classroom.
“A failure to listen to the profession,” she says of the previous government’s approach to education.
Source Agencies
