The number of female educators saying goodbye to public school classrooms in South Australia has more than doubled in the past five years. The figure is well above the number of male teachers leaving the professions and experts cite misogynistic attitudes from male students and disrespectful behaviour as playing key roles in the shift.
Data reveals 196 women resigned from public school or pre-school roles during the 2022-23 financial year – up from 71 five years ago. In comparison, 77 male educators left the job in the same financial year period – up from 40 the previous financial year.
The findings come in the wake of news that student footballers at one of Adelaide’s elite independent schools, Pembroke School, created a spreadsheet of fineable ‘offences’ levelled at their peers. The spreadsheet included crude labels, including a racist slur degrading Indigenous women.
But educators confirm that the behaviour is across both public and private schools – and have been getting worse.
Teachers face “complex” classroom conditions
Unley High School principal Greg Rolton made global headlines in 2022 when he led his school to take action against negative behaviours that included boys “barking” at a female teacher.
Australian Education Union SA branch president Jennie-Marie Gorman says students’ behaviour towards teachers “has changed”. She blames the impact of the manosphere, where people like Andrew Tate, who has gone from kickboxer to misogynistic social media influencer.
The result, says Gorman, is that female teachers are telling the union they want to reduce their hours or leave teaching completely “for their own mental well-being”.
SA Education Department chief executive Martin Westwell acknowledges that teachers face “increasingly more complex” classroom conditions and says support from the department will include “prioritising respectful relationships within the classroom, and updating that curriculum to ensure students focus more on misogyny, disrespectful behaviour and gender-based violence”.
Westwell says other supports to boost teacher retention include professional development opportunities, more permanent employment options, reduction of administrative burdens, extra lesson planning time, and help managing parent interactions. Many of these changes form part of a record $1.6bn enterprise bargaining agreement between the SA state government and public educators.
SA Premier Peter Malinauskas is also concerned about the influence of Tate and others who he says are “driving this type of behaviour” among students. In response, Malinauskas has widened the scope of a royal commission into domestic violence in SA to include sexual violence and related online content.
Currently, more than 15,800 teachers work in SA’s government schools and pre-schools, or as temporary relief teachers. Around 12,000 are women.The number of teachers who have left the education system reflects those who have transferred to other government agencies, but does not include retired teachers.
Opposition education spokesman John Gardner says it is “really concerning to see any story of people feeling discouraged from continuing in their profession because of bad behaviours”.
