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Australian students shun education degrees as fears grow over ‘unprecedented’ teacher shortage
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2023
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Stressful training and work environment, long hours, and the pay isn't that great either. This really is the government's problem to solve - and it's probably not going to be solved just by paying people once to complete their degree, it will have to be throughout their career by providing more pay and more support. Which of course means the public will eventually end up footing at least some of the bill - but the alternative, where education is compromised, will end up costing even more.
We shouldn't concede that the public has to pay more to fix this problem. We just need to pressure our government representatives to prioritise funding for education above that of other areas.
The average teacher makes $84,810 per year.
It is estimated that there are 307,041 full time teachers.
This equates to a full teacher salary budget of $26B. We know that education is managed at the state level, but let's just experiment with a scenario whereby the federal government decides to provide a funding boost to salaries. Giving all teachers a 25% pay rise would cost $6.5B per year.
How much was the 2023 budget surplus just recently announced by the government? $22B.
So, the government could have covered a 25% pay increase to all teachers in Australia, using a third of the surplus that they realised in this year's budget.
Ok, that's for one year, but what about future years, you might ask...
Well, how about we take some of the funding from the scrapping of Stage 3 tax cuts. The Parliamentary Budget Office estimates that the cost of the Stage 3 tax cuts will be $313B over a decade ($31.3B per year). Those tax cuts could even be watered down so that they don't impact lower incomes. The top 20% of income earners in the country receive 73% of the benefit from those tax cuts.
Let's only have tax cuts for the bottom 80% of income earners. That would still give us $22.8B per year in extra budget that we allocate to education. It's that simple.
Stage 3 tax cuts are an idiotic and election losing thing to target. There’s a reason Labor aren’t touching it and refuse to talk about canceling stage 3.
I will riot if I end up getting taxed more while multinational corporations continue to pay zero tax.
Piss off - it's absolutely moronic policy. Yes, give teeth to attack multinationals, but tax millionaires, ffs. I'm tired of hearing about new tax loopholes for people who've never struggled a day in their lives - corporate or civilian.
Stage 3 is theft.
I agree completely. At some point you have to draw the line. Labor should go all out ad wise, fuck off stage 3 and tell everyone the deal. If we are to lose an election over it then we're fucked as a country, so much money our country desperately needs that we are pissing into the wind.
Lets be clear; stage 3 will impact me to the tune of $9k a year.
I didn't get free, or even cheap University.
I didn't get any student benefits.
I didn't get any child bonus.
I have collected a total of 4 months of unemployment benefits from Centrelink in my life, when I have worked since I was 15.
Never struggled? Cunt I have had to choose between milk or rice because rent was due and I was earning five tenths of fuck all while working as a student and getting no support.
Stage 3 tax cuts are literally the first fucking break I will get in my working life.
You reckon only "millionaires" who are millionaires by assets not income will benefit. What a joke.
I am a hard working professional and anyone targetting my pocket before multi-national corporations or fuckwit boomers with 6 properties have to pay their share can get fucked.
This boils down to "fuck you, got mine".
That money is our clapped out health system. That money is our clapped out education system. That money is rebuilding towns from the next season of bushfires - hell, maybe they'll work in some climate resistant infrastructure. That money is land management. That money is research for the CSIRO. That money is social housing.
That money is department funding to go after multinationals.
That money is stopping someone else from needing to put up with the bullshit of food scarcity you did.
This isn't America and thank fuck. If we stop spending, it falls apart and we've been putting off maintaining our society for decades now. Grow and stop seeing the bullshit you went through as validation to put others through worse.
The ladder was pulled up before I had a chance to use it.
This isn’t “fuck you, got mine” it’s fuck you, I will get mine.
I haven’t built wealth yet and stage 3 will help me do so. Doesn’t help you? I don’t care.
How you still have faith in a status quo that's actively fucking us all says so much. The absolute limit of your imagination is to graduate being abused and become the boot - which is sad as hell because no matter what you do you'll never be rich enough to escape this. You're too far behind, dude - you can't afford to pay your way out of what's coming. Accept it. You're disposable. They'll die laughing at you for selling your life away for table scraps.
Putting the boot into other poors isn't going to stop you from being who/where you are.
Of all of us, you're going to fall the hardest no matter how hard you run away - and all the supports you'll need to ease you through 'failing' at neoliberalism on a dying planet will have been cannibalised by upstanding, fanatically Thatcherite cunts like yourself.
When your time comes, and I say this earnestly, be sure to do the rest of us a favour and post your plot so we can organise a schedule for pissing on it. You'll be like the forgotten soldier for contemporary idiots.
Lmao wanting to tax multinationals and mining companies is somehow Thatcherism!
I can tell you’re always going to be a poor because you’re clearly brain dead.
Back at you, bootlicker.
I've collected none, therefore my opinion is worth more than yours since I've received less assistance.
I am all for scraping the stage 3 tax cuts, because I know that the money I get from the tax cut will be more than offset by the ever increasing costs of living - including the social cost of having more and more people struggling.
It is petty and small minded to be supporting a set of tax cuts because you want an extra slice of cake, when the majority of the benefit will go to someone who already owns a bakery.
Glad we agree!
An unfortunate typo which has now been rectified. It's good to see a mistake and get a chance to fix it isn't it?
If you like taxes so much you’re welcome to pay extra.
I do love how you’re all blinded by stage 3 tax cuts while mining companies continue to pay nothing to extract our natural resources.
We are already seeing the result of this. This is the result of this.
I don’t want to disrespect teachers, but the really skilful teachers, with innate people-management skills ended up in the private sector, in high paying people-management roles.
This resulted in only the truly passionate teachers staying on the industry. These passionate teachers were easy pray for manipulative, trouble-making students, which forced more and more teachers out of the industry.
This has been a negative-feedback loop over the last 40 years. The only way to resolve the this is to (strategically) pump money into pulling people out of the private sector and back into teaching.
I am sure that there are thousands of people in middle management roles who would love to take on a teaching (or educational management) role with KPIs based on benefit to society, rather than benefit to the pay packet of the next manager up the org chart, as long as they had a decent wage.