Mr BAYLEY – Minister, just to follow the line of questioning from Ms Johnston around alleviating pressure on teachers. It’s incredibly welcome that this is acknowledged and accepted that you need to do something, and something urgently, in that area.
Obviously, teachers are managing their own time. They’re not doing unnecessary activities. The real question is, the work that they don’t do – what happens to that, and who does it, and how is that going to be funded? My understanding is, in terms of some of the ICT programs and other things, there’s less money going into some of those programs which may ultimately alleviate the administrative burden and so forth. The question is, are you prepared to prioritise elements of the Budget into this, and how are you structurally going to make it work?
Ms PALMER – With the greatest of respect, I’m not sure that all teachers agree that everything they’re being asked to do is where they believe the priority is. This is why I’m having those discussions with stakeholder groups, but also with teachers themselves. I have been very fortunate to secure a teacher in my ministerial staff with decades of experience, who has been a teacher before and after COVID, and is able to give incredible insights to me about how this works on the ground and in a school. That’s part of the work that we need to do, and further discussions that need to be had.
There are varying points of view about where the priority should be. So, that’s what I see this job as being – pulling all of that together, then sitting down with the department and really stepping through: What can we do? Where’s the priority list? Here’s the non‑negotiable, and perhaps we could have a thought process in this category over here. That’s the work that we want to do. As I said to Ms Dow, the member for Braddon, before, that we would like to see a lever pulled before the end of this year to try to release some of that pressure. We will also be looking at this really strategically. Sometimes you can find yourself in a position where you just keep adding and adding and adding. My commitment from where I’m sitting is that if you want to add, you have to take something out. Let’s balance those priorities.
Mr BAYLEY – I guess it’s difficult to see that with a diminishing budget.
