The government is now beginning to partially unfreeze General Line Teacher (GLT) positions that have been frozen since December, 2018 by the former State Administrative Council (SAC).
This represents a significant and overdue first step; when the unfettered creation of thousands of employment options for qualified teachers can take place, there will be a supply chain stabilizer and all chronic educational staffing shortages will be alleviated significantly.
Five years ago, when the positions were frozen, the recruitment of qualified educators to our universities for school based architectures was a negative impact to recruitment.
In addition to freezing positions, undergraduate to undergraduate teacher freezing led to reduced recruitment to dual track teacher preparation stream for our already vacant pool, teacher trained educators, who took on additional workloads, compounding their already substantial workloads.
The empty positions in local schools hurt the educational rhythm experienced in the school buildings at the same time that valued teacher preparation quality especially in rural and remote schools endured some of the worst delinquencies with respect of unqualified teachers that existed, even in our strongest rural and remote regional centres suffered classroom vacancies.
The unfreeze will reveil no untangled educational woefulness story that will mobilize educational policy effectively, but the signal by the government of demonstrated concern that they are not completely closure minded and that they are not failing in the education sector was good educational news.
The eventual reopening of these positions will result in all qualified candidates finding employment, and more importantly, the education system will have students receiving the learning and educational support services, meeting needs and wants for both them and our system of education.
An enriched education system is exactly what an enriching society needs to move ahead: this is an endeavour to show basic commitment and ground level human commitment with the next generations.
Furthermore, by reconsidering decisions already made, it would show that the governing is progressive and enterprising and is primarily interested in the public good.
It is reassuring to see that policymakers are attuned to what is actually happening on the ground, and taking the opportunity to make improvements as they can.
Looking ahead, the teacher recruitment process must absolutely ensure transparency and expedited, streamlined as a newly appointed teacher should not have to deal with being delayed with employment.
Following it closely would be sustained investment into teacher training and equipment so that the long-term benefit accrued through any form of training is not lost.
Once again, it affirms the government’s continuing commitment to the empowerment of the teacher and student, which connects with a brighter educated future as the outcome.
