A cohort of fed-up teachers gathered outside of Dubbo MP Dugald Saunders' office on Thursday morning in a bid to drive him towards taking action on teacher shortages across the Orana region.
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But Mr Saunders has rebuked the claims of a teacher shortage, stating the campaign is "untrue and misleading".
The protest was led by NSW Teachers Federation president Angelo Gavrielatos who claims the NSW Government has covered up the extent of the shortages and the connection it has to uncompetitive salaries and unsustainable workloads.
"Documents released to Parliament by the NSW Department of Education show the NSW government has covered up the extent of the shortages and the connection to uncompetitive salaries and unsustainable workloads," Mr Gavrielatos said.
"It's in writing and this tells us what is the bleeding truth - the government knows. They also know the 1000 teacher shortages today is predicted to become 2,425 by the end of 2023.
"There's already a teacher shortage with more than 1000 vacancies across NSW Far West, Inner West and North and South West. This is a crisis. With a massive explosion of student enrollments - a predicted 200,000 additional enrollments in the next few years and a decline of more than 30 per cent of staff - there will be consequences."
Mr Saunders said while there was "no doubt" a strain on teacher supply, we were by "no means" going to run out of teachers.
"The Department of Education's staffing projections are point-in-time, rolling figures. To retain the most up-to-date projections on teacher supply and demand, the department updates these models and the resulting forecast regularly," he said.
"On average, the department requires about 750 additional [full time equivalent] per year through to 2025 to support growing student enrolments.
"This is in addition to replacing teachers who retire from the department. On top of the NSW government's 2019 commitment to add 4,600 teachers to the system over four years - which is well on track - the NSW government's recently released $125 million Teacher Supply Strategy is expected to add another 3,700 to that pipeline."
Mr Saunders said the strain on teacher supply was due to several factors including NSW having more enrolments than "ever before" and enrolments in teaching degrees being down 29 per cent since 2014.
"That's why it's critical for NSW to get ahead of the curve and lead the nation with a number of initiatives to strengthen the incoming pipeline of teachers," he said.
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