This report is in response to the Australian Productivity Commission’s inquiry Building a skilled and adaptable workforce. The report urges the Commission to prioritise teacher retention and reduce administrative burden to improve productivity, instead of draft recommendations to government that risk deskilling core teaching work. It finds that while the Commission has correctly identified time pressures on teachers as needing solutions, its draft recommendations risk narrowing teachers’ roles to delivering pre-packaged lessons, instead of recognising their expertise in designing and adapting learning.

Key findings

• Australia’s teachers spend up to 106 million hours every year on administrative and compliance tasks that should be handled by dedicated school support staff.
• Teachers overwhelmingly identify administration, compliance and lack of support staff as the biggest barriers to effective teaching, not lesson planning.
• One in three teachers plan to leave the profession, citing workload and administrative pressures as key reasons.
• Centralising lesson planning through a national platform and relying on artificial intelligence (AI) tools risks hollowing out the profession while failing to solve causes of workload stress.

Key recommendations

• Funding more administrative and support staff in classrooms so that teachers can focus on teaching.
• The views of teachers to be included in designing strategies to minimise administrative burden.
• A national investment strategy to boost support staff in schools.
• A proactive and research-based policy for edtech and AI as teaching tools.