Shortage of Albury and Wodonga teachers felt by parents, students

Wodonga Middle Years College has this week announced Year 7, Year 8 and Year 9 students would move to remote and flexible learning on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday respectively due to staff being away in COVID-19 and close contact isolation.

Allison Olney is the mother of a Year 8 student at WMYC and a Year 12 student at Wodonga Senior Secondary College, which she said was in a more dire staffing situation with teachers also away due to COVID-19.

"This week alone, in one day he had only one class manned by a teacher, another day only two," she said, speaking of the elder child.

"It's very unproductive, especially for Year 12 students."

Ms Olney said the WMYC remote classes were short.

"Some teachers attend, some don't," she said.

In a statement to parents, WMYC campus principal Maree Cribbes said students' attendance would be recorded and they were to catch up on unfinished work while at home, but they were not required to log into online classes.

The Border Mail contacted both schools, but no one was available for comment.

Ms Olney said the situation was sad and she'd like to see replacement teachers from the same field.

"We want kids at school, we want them to learn, be productive, at least set work from their class teacher would help," she said.

"It's very frustrating."

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NSW Teachers Federation country organiser Jack O'Brien said the problem existed on both sides of the Border.

"It's been reported to me that at least one Albury school has moved to partially online learning due to an already existing shortage that's only been exacerbated by rising COVID numbers," he said.

"Across the entire state we're essentially in the middle of a staffing crisis and it's no different in the Riverina.

"It's completely common in our schools that there's unfilled vacancies [and] teachers are teaching out of their qualified teaching areas in order to fill those gaps.

"There's a shortage of casual teachers, so it's very common for classes to be collapsed, placed under minimal supervision and really the people who are being impacted the most by this are the students."

Mr O'Brien said teachers were doing the best they could, but there simply weren't enough of them.

"They're seeing students miss out, no teacher wants to walk out at the end of the day feeling like they could have done better, but really they feel like they have one arm tied behind their back most days," he said.

"It's unsustainable and that's just demonstrated by the fact that we have so many teachers choosing to leave the profession ... and we don't have the new teachers coming into the industry from the other end."

Last month about 50 Albury teachers met at QEII Square before school and marched to the office of Member for Albury Justin Clancy to protest unsustainable workloads, uncompetitive wages and fewer young people entering the field.

The march followed a Howlong Public School teacher strike due to staff shortages in June and the first NSW Teachers Federation 24-hour teachers strike in 10 years in December.

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