Ms O’CONNOR question to MINISTER for EDUCATION, Ms PALMER
We know teacher retention is a challenge for you and the department. There are a whole range of reasons for that. Mental distress, school-based violence and bullying are increasing. As members will know, there is currently an inquiry into bullying. I understand you are awaiting the results of that inquiry.
How will the new staff wellbeing model address these growing issues and needs? Will this translate into extra support for staff such as social workers, psychologists and education support specialists in our schools?
ANSWER
Mr President, I will start by saying it is horrifying at times to hear what some of our teachers are dealing with in our schools. It is really important from my perspective as education minister to say that the responsibility around bad behaviour in schools on bullying, sometimes between children, sometimes between a child and a teacher and sometimes involving families and parents is absolutely unacceptable.
It is not wholly the responsibility of schools to manage this problem; it is an issue society needs to take responsibility for. However, I am very aware of the pressures on our amazing teaching staff, and it has been a very clear focus of mine over the past 12 months. As part of the new funding through the Better and Fairer Schools Agreement, I directed the department to assign a portion of this new funding to the establishment of a new school staff wellbeing response team.
Now we are still working through the finer details of how this team will function. I am absolutely confident these individuals will provide direct specialist support to school leaders from both the proactive wellbeing coordination and a planning perspective as well as assisting with support coordination during and after a critical incident. This will be an extra layer of wellbeing support for school staff. It is not replacing what we currently have. It is adding another layer to the support we already have, and it will be a very targeted response team.
They will work directly with schools we identify as needing some additional assistance, but they will also be able to respond when there is, for example, an incident at a school where an immediate response and extra support is required. That body of work is being led by our education Secretary and there has been a great response from stakeholders, is my understanding, to this particular wellbeing response team we are standing up. I also acknowledge your comments on our need for speech and language pathologists, social workers and for school psychologists. We know they play such a vital role in the wellbeing of our schools. Over the last decade, our government has employed record numbers of staff. That has seen an overall number of professional support staff on the ground, an increase of 101.15 FTE. That is a number as of March of this year –
Ms O’Connor – Since when, sorry, to March this year?
Ms PALMER – 31 March 2025.
Ms O’Connor – Back to when?
Ms PALMER – Over the last decade.
Ms O’Connor – Thank you.
Ms PALMER – We continue to support this workforce and certainly are doing everything we can to bolster this workforce, including funding 20 new scholarships for the next generation of speech and language pathologists and psychologists in Tasmania. This funding is in addition to the nine scholarships already made available for speech pathology from 2024. Professional support staff shortages are indeed a national issue, we know that. Other jurisdictions are facing the same issues we are but, at times, Tasmania faces unique additional challenges due to our size and also to our dispersed population. We are certainly doing everything we can to bolster those positions. I had the great privilege of meeting two of the new scholarship recipients. One was a young woman from Western Australia, another was a young woman from Victoria, who had come to Tasmania because of the incentive of those scholarships. It was wonderful to see the work that they were doing in our schools. They were excited to be here in Tasmania. My hope is they will remain in Tasmania even after the benefits of the scholarship are done.
