Hundreds of public school deputy principals, assistant principals and head teachers are to return to classroom teaching across NSW from next year after a government review.
The NSW government on Sunday said it expected teachers in ‘additional deputy principal positions in all but the state’s most complex
settings’ to be teaching between 2 and 2.5 days a week from 2025.
Additional head teachers and assistant principals are expected to be in the classroom 3.5 to 4 days a week.
The government says the change is designed to correct an inequity in teaching time of executive teachers created as a result of the former coalition state government’s Local Schools, Local Decisions policy.
A Department of Education review into executive teachers last year found 1500 executive teachers were not teaching timetabled classes at all, while another 2400 were teaching fewer hours than required, a government media release on Sunday read.
‘The former Liberal government took some of our most experienced teachers off class at a time when we had a chronic teacher shortage,’ Deputy Premier and Minister for Education and Early Learning Prue Car was quoted saying.
‘We are correcting that by bringing them back into the classroom where their experience and knowledge is needed the most,’ Ms Car said.
Public schools are expected to benefit from an extra 237,000 teaching hours estimated every year under the new scheme.
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