Changing conditions of work in neoliberal times: How the NSW Teachers’ Federation has responded to changes in teachers’ industrial and professional working conditions in NSW public education, 1985-2017

Despite decades of neoliberal reform transforming teachers’ work, the NSW Teachers’ Federation (NSWTF) remains the voice of teachers in the public education system of New South Wales, Australia. This thesis argues that the NSWTF has effectively exercised strategic choice in response to neoliberal education reform through building organisational capacity and activating strategic leverage to protect and advance teachers’ industrial and professional conditions of work. Eleven key disputes/campaigns are analysed relating to teachers’ salaries, professional status, staffing entitlements, assessment of performance, professional development, and investment in public education. Extensive document analysis was undertaken for the period 1985 to 2017. These were supplemented by 71 interviews with NSWTF officials and rank-and-file members, ministers for education, leaders of principals’ organisations, and senior leaders of the education department. A model of teacher union effectiveness is developed which draws upon the concepts of organisational capacity and strategic leverage. Through applying this model, building organisational capacity (via recruitment, developing grassroots structures, building democracy, and ensuring financial security and sustainability) is found to be essential for strengthening union power. In examining strategic leverage, this study finds that while ‘resistance’ and ‘rapprochement’ approaches (Carter et al. 2010), characterised by industrial militancy and efforts to achieve gains within neoliberal constraints, respectively, were once commonplace and generally successful strategies for the NSWTF, the contemporary neoliberal context has diminished their effectiveness. Teacher unions may reap more reward by embracing ‘renewal’ strategies (Carter et al. 2010) aimed at greater union-government cooperation, ‘professionalisation’ agendas, presenting counter-narratives to neoliberal discourses, and leveraging support from parents and the education community

Intensification of teachers’ work under devolution: A ‘tsunami’ of paperwork

Australian public school teachers work some of the longest weekly hours among Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, particularly in the state of New South Wales where average hours are officially in, or near, the statistical category of ‘very long working hours’. These reports of a high workload have occurred alongside recent policy moves that seek to devolve responsibility for schooling, augmenting teacher and school-level accountability. This article explores changes in work demands experienced by New South Wales teachers. As part of a larger project on schools as workplaces, we examine teaching professionals’ views through interviews with teacher union representatives. Consistent with a model of work intensification, workload increases were almost universally reported, primarily in relation to ‘paperwork’ requirements. However, differences in the nature of intensification were evident when data were disaggregated according to socio-educational advantage, level of schooling (primary or secondary) and location. The distinct patterns of work intensification that emerge reflect each school’s relative advantage or disadvantage within the school marketplace, influenced by broader neoliberal reforms occurring within the state and nation

Teacher workload in Australia: National reports of intensification and its threats to democracy

The recent reforms of education, driven by neoliberal logics of choice, competition, and autonomy, have fundamentally challenged the importance of education and schooling as core to the healthy functioning of socio-democratic societies. Little attention has been paid, however, to how the de-democratisation of education is affecting the work of teachers as educators. Drawing on data from a series of systematic and comparable large-scale surveys (N=48,000), we draw attention to the stark reality of teachers’ work today in the context of Australia. The most prominent finding is the documentation of the universal intensification of teachers’ work and explosion of teachers’ working hours driven by instruments of compliance, datafication, and diminution of time to get on with the core job of teaching. We reflect upon how intensification of teachers’ work threatens the democratic purposes of schooling and argue for system-level monitoring and evaluation to inform policy-making to challenge de-democratising practices

Submission to 'Valuing Australia’s Teachers: Parliamentary Inquiry into the Status of the Teaching Profession'

Parliament of Australia website. Together, over the last five years, through a series of research projects, the above colleagues at the University of Sydney, Curtin University, University of New South Wales (Australia) and the Lulea University of Technology (Sweden), have examined the issues of work, workload, and conditions of work of Australian school teachers and school leaders, drawing international comparison to Sweden and elsewhere. We have reported (in conjunction with the NSW Teachers Federation (NSWTF), and State School Teachers Union of Western Australia (SSTUWA)) on the largest, recent survey of teachers’ work and workplace conditions in the country through input and extensive responses from over 20,000 teachers and school leaders. We welcome this Parliamentary Inquiry as both timely and of great importance

What needs to happen for school autonomy to be mobilised to create more equitable public schools and systems of education?

The series of responses in this article were gathered as part of an online mini conference held in September 2021 that sought to explore different ideas and articulations of school autonomy reform across the world (Australia, Canada, England, Ireland, the USA, Norway, Sweden and New Zealand). It centred upon an important question: what needs to happen for school autonomy to be mobilised to create more equitable public schools and systems of education? There was consensus across the group that school autonomy reform creates further inequities at school and system levels when driven by the logics of marketisation, competition, economic efficiency and public accountability. Against the backdrop of these themes, the conference generated discussion and debate where provocations and points of agreement and disagreement about issues of social justice and the mobilisation of school autonomy reform were raised. As an important output of this discussion, we asked participants to write a short response to the guiding conference question. The following are these responses which range from philosophical considerations, systems and governance perspectives, national particularities and teacher and principal perspectives

From marketising to empowering: Evaluating union responses to devolutionary policies in education

Major reforms in education, globally, have focused on increased accountability and devolution of responsibility to the local school level to improve the efficiency and quality of education. While emerging research is considering implications of these changed governance arrangements at both a school and system level, little attention has been afforded to teacher union responses to devolutionary reform, despite teaching being a highly union-organised profession and the endurance of decentralising-style reforms in education for over 40 years. Drawing upon a power resources approach, this article examines union responses in cases of devolutionary reform in a populous Australian state. Through analysing evolving policy discourse, from anti-bureaucratic, managerialising rhetoric to a ‘post-bureaucratic, empowerment’ agenda, this article contributes to understandings of union power for resisting decentralising, neoliberal policy agendas by exposing the limits of public sector unions mobilising traditional power resources and arguing for strengthening of discursive and symbolic power

Teachers and educational policy : Markets, Populism, and Im/Possibilities for Resistance

This double special issue, “Teachers and educational policy: markets, populism, and im/possibilities for resistance” explores the figurative politics of the teacher in current education systems around the world. In this introduction to the issue, we discuss how and why teachers have emerged as a key focus of contemporary policy reform. We argue that teachers are seen as a logical site of public commentary in the global knowledge economy, yet teacher expertise is feared as both known and unknowable, thereby becoming a target of heightened surveillance and control. The papers in the issue are divided into two instalments. First, those which address how external actors are seen to be (re)shaping teachers and teaching, as well as notions of professionalism, knowledge and ‘truth’ in education. Second, those which explore experiences of, and possibilities for resistance to, such shifts. We close with a discussion of the range of international contexts from which the contributors to this issue write, arguing for a need to reimagine teachers and schooling in ways that are less limited by the systems and structures that have formed common international reference points in policy development thus far.</p

Collaborating for policy impact: Academic-practitioner collaboration in industrial relations research

Knowledge co-production between academics and practitioners is increasingly a focus for university workplace contexts. While there is emerging interest in how social science academics can engage with industry to generate impact, little attention has been paid to how one form of practitioner organisation, trade unions, engage with academics to influence policy and member outcomes. In this article, we examine a case of research collaboration with an education trade union based in New South Wales, Australia, to explore the process of knowledge co-production with this partnership and its impact upon education policy. In examining this decade-long partnership, we contribute to literature on union strategy by depicting collaboration with researchers as a unique strategy for influencing policy outcomes (in this case, addressing teacher workload), while also contributing to emerging scholarship on knowledge co-production as a means to generate impact beyond the academy. As such, this article contributes a rare example of ‘cross-over’ between the worlds of academia and industry, which may inform future engagement and impact processes

Teachers’ Work and Working Conditions: Collaborating To Drive Change

Susan McGrath-Champ et al. introduce a series of articles on teachers’ work and working conditions. Their work provides an update to “Understanding work in schools, The Foundation for teaching and learning”, the 2018 report to the NSW Teachers Federation. The report examined the administrative demands that encroach on the work of teachers and impede their capacity to focus on tasks directly related to their teaching and to students’ learning

Valuing the Teaching Profession Inquiry - Submission from the Teachers’ Work in Schools Research Team

The past ten years have seen considerable shifts reported in the amount and nature of work undertaken by teachers in schools. Our programme of research has documented these perceptions, and associated experiences, in detail across two state contexts (NSW and WA). Collectively, our research highlights that public school teachers in this country are experiencing substantial pressure related, for instance, to administrative and data collection requirements, with this difficulty ‘blanketing’ teaching work across such factors as school type, geographical location and level of advantage. At the same time, our research has shown the considerable and context-specific challenges some teachers face in a system that is increasingly stratified, largely due to an ongoing policy of school ‘choice’. Teachers, across our publications, call for greater support from their employer, and wish to feel valued. In this submission to the Valuing the Teaching Profession Inquiry, we summarise our recent relevant publications and provide a list of recommendations for positive policy progress to address current challenges confronting teachers