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Teach in australia - help and advice needed please.

Last post 13/01/11 at 19:04 by janehughes11, 16 replies
Post started by cazzy82 on 31/08/08 at 00:57

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  • cazzy82 avatar
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    Posted by: cazzy82 31/08/2008 at 00:57
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    Hello all,

     Firstly I anticipate that many of my points/questions will have been asked at somepoint but I would really like some help, advice, direction. Im currently about to begin my 3 rd year in primary teaching, studied a 4 year BED. My boyfriend and I have been discussing a great deal about the prospect of moving to australia we are at a position where we have no children, mortgage etc, and both of us are feeling a little fed up with life and wanting to make a move to somnewhere new. For me it wil be first time in Aus but my boyfriend has visited the country on working Visa.

     He is in position of having been offered a job with sponsership, if he wishes to take it up. There leaves me I know I could apply for a skilled visa. But where can I research teaching in Aus, what would I need to do? Where can I find advice?

    As you can appreciate google brings up thousands of pages its a minefield!!! Suppose what Im looking for is some step by step directions to help me make an informed decison although I am becoming more certain that this is def for me. Please help me out!

    Thankyou in advancex

     
  • Christopher Curtis avatar
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    Posted by: Christopher Curtis 31/08/2008 at 02:03
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    cazzy82, Please start the name of my country with a capital letter. It does matter if you want to work as a teacher in it. I am a Victorian and I taught there for 33 years. I am astounded by how badly teachers are treated in the UK. The only aspect of Victorian education that is not better than in the UK is pay, and I am not certain about that either because the official exchange rates do not take account of the actual purchasing power of the different currencies. The top unpromoted teacher salary in Victoria, which takes 11 years to reach, is just over $75,500, enough to buy three new small cars. A nice home in the outer suburbs of Melbourne can be bought for five years’ salary. So far I have read of large classes, high teaching loads, part-timers forced to come in more often than the days in their time fraction, part-timers forced to come in just for meetings, teachers with who see their classes only once a fortnight, teachers who have to write reports on 500 students, teachers who have to prepare lessons for the persons who cover them for their PPA because the school leadership is unable to organise a rational school timetable, unqualified people called cover supervisors taking classes for absent teachers or teachers whose timetables cannot be properly organised by school authorities and something called OFSTED which can actually send someone called an inspector into a teacher’s class, and on and on it goes. So getting out of the UK sounds a wise move for a teacher. The Teaching Australia website has a list of other websites and some other information of relevance: http://www.teachingaustralia.edu.au/ta/go/home/pid/418 . Registration by the Victorian Institute of Teaching (or the equivalent body in other states) is required for all teachers, including those who take “cover” (called “extras” here). Employment opportunities can be found via the Victorian Department of Education and Early Child hood Development. You should join the Australian Education Union and try to get to a school with a strong union branch as teachers will be better treated there. There is nothing like OFSTEFD in Victoria. We have not had inspectors for around 30 years. However, some Blairite officials have made their way to Australia and we are being threatened with some of their dumb ideas. The average Victorian teacher teaches about 50 hours a week, which is excessive. I used to do hours like that years ago, but in my last two years I cut back to something just over 40 hours. Prep to year 2 classes are generally capped at 21 pupils and average 20.7. Year 3 to year 6 classes average 23.4 pupils. Year 7 to 12 classes are generally capped at 25 students, while the average for English classes at those levels is 21.6 students. Primary teaching loads are limited to 22 hours a week. Secondary teaching loads, including extras (cover) cannot go over 20 hours, but hardly ever reach that level. The maximum in my last school when I was timetabler was 16 hours 48 minutes, not including extras, which are limited to 21 a year, while the average was 15 hours 45 minutes. This means teachers there had a minimum of more than 40 per cent of their class load as PPA, rather than the 10 per cent in the UK for non-NQTs. In Victoria, schools directly employ their own teachers. I think some of the other states have kept the more efficient system of central employment. Schools will vary, so take some care in selecting which one you want to work in. I don’t think there is even one in Victoria that is as bad as the worst English schools that I have read of on this site, but there are ones that are difficult to teach in, and there are others that are very pleasant.
  • Christopher Curtis avatar
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    Posted by: Christopher Curtis 31/08/2008 at 03:25
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    What happened to my paragraphing?
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    Posted by: Isolated Jake 31/08/2008 at 10:02
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    Hi Cazzy82,

    I'm thinking of moving out there myself as my wife will be seconded in Perth for 2 years. I've done a bit of research myself - it's pretty hard to do as nothing seems as straightforward as it does when looking for a job in the UK. You really need to think about where you will be, and whether you want to teach in a state or private school.

     

    First of all, whereabouts are you going to be living? Oz is a massive place - Western Australia is vast and people can find themselves in very sparse, remote areas - just as a sobering eye opener take a look at the following link and scroll down to Brick Lane's comment and read from there.

     

    http://pub39.bravenet.com/forum/3280197123/show/715000

     

    Whichever state you're going to live in will have different rules and regulations (and pay) then other states so look here and click on the right link as a start:

     

    http://www.education.gov.au/goved/go/pid/2844

     

    These are the recommended sites for finding work (at least in WA):

     

    www.teachers.on.net and www.seek.com.au 

     

    Hope this helps Smile

     

     
  • biologybabe avatar
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    Posted by: biologybabe 03/09/2008 at 06:09
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    First, have just arrived in Melboure, I have to make it clear that the picture teaching over here is no where near as rosy as CC paints it. ... Yes covers (or extras) are more limited than in the UK, but you can be assigned covers 'in lieu' if a class is taken away for exams/ trips etc and this does not count towards your cover limit.  From what I've seen so far most people end up with more cover lessons at my school here than they did at my previous UK school.  Secondly, most timetablers are not as generous as CC and most people will work up to their limit (if they are under allocated they have to  do extras or duties to make up the difference).  The salary in the Government schools and the Catholic schools is centrally agreed and is pretty good (I'm in my 5th Year of teaching and earning $58,000 which equates to about 28,000GBP at the current exchange rate so it's more or less equivalent.  The cost of living is slightly less than in south of the UK where I came from, but not by much.

     

    I'm not trying to sound like a winging pom, I absolutley love it over here.  But I'd advise you don't move out expecting the job to be much easier and for more money as CCs post indicates.  It's pretty much the same s**t different country.

     

    www.britishexpats.com is a great site for information on visas, other than that you need to decide where you're moving too for more speciifc advice
  • Christopher Curtis avatar
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    Posted by: Christopher Curtis 03/09/2008 at 08:53
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    biologybabe, Good luck in Melbourne. I don’t think of teaching in Victoria as ‘rosy’, just much better than in the UK, though not as good as it was 20 years ago. My knowledge of UK comes mostly from this site where I read of things I have never experienced and of other things that I have rarely heard of here. You can be assigned ‘in lieus’ but only on the day you lose a class and only up to 80 per cent in term 4 when senior students leave. If conditions in your school are worse than they were in mine, I am not surprised. It’s because a lot of schools have weak union branches. But no secondary school should have teaching loads above 19.2 hours (including home groups and extras). Any school that does must have teachers who have collectively volunteered for it. The new EBA will lead to a one-period reduction in teaching loads in most schools if the teachers there are prepared to insist on it. You can find a lot of information at: http://pub39.bravenet.com/forum/3280197123/show/706780 The Victorian Government has just released a new Blueprint on education. It is one of the three most significant reports on education in the last thirty years, the others being the Blackburn Report, which brought us the low-standard Victorian Certificate of Education, and the Institute of Public Affairs’s Schooling Victoria, which set the damaging agenda for the previous government. The true significance of the new Blueprint, not noticed by the press in its coverage, is that it signals the long-awaited reversal of the market-based approach to education that has failed so badly since 1992. The Government is once again accepting responsibility for the education of all children and not leaving some to languish in failing schools while the market slowly closes them, but there is a downside, with its proposed importation of two UK ideas: short courses to rush high-achieving graduates from other fields into schools to ‘teach’ (without proper qualifications, so there goes my argument about needing to be properly qualified to be a teacher here) and academies. There is a chance that we can stop the latter. The actual report can be found at: http://www.education.vic.gov.au/about/directions/blueprint2008/default.htm
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    Posted by: jbeckles 03/09/2008 at 13:13
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    Hi there,

    Have you seen our brand new 'Teaching overseas' section in the 'Careers Advice' channel on the TES website?  We have an article called 'My life as a teacher in Australia' and lots more advice on teaching overseas.

     You can find it by clicking on the 'Jobs' tab, then click on the 'career advice' sub-heading, this takes you to the careers advice homepage, scroll down past the pics and you'll see all the careers categories including 'Teaching overseas'

    Good luck,

    Jennifer
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    Posted by: wellhellogirls 05/09/2008 at 01:03
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    what kind of police check do you need to take with you to register in Aussie as a teacher? Is the subject access request ok? Or do they require an enhanced CRB?
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    Posted by: alou85 05/09/2008 at 17:06
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    biology babe I thought you would be able to help me!!!! I've just graduated with a Bed science degree in primary teaching I'm just starting out and subbing when I get the chance but I really want to go to OZ and really want to go to Melbourne and I was just wondering if you could give me some advice in finding employment for the year I don't really know how to go about it.  I don't mind working in primary or secondary school and I am aware that I would have to work just as much as home!!! I would be grateful for a reply !!! Thank youSmile
  • alou85 avatar
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    Posted by: alou85 05/09/2008 at 17:06
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    biology babe I thought you would be able to help me!!!! I've just graduated with a Bed science degree in primary teaching I'm just starting out and subbing when I get the chance but I really want to go to OZ and really want to go to Melbourne and I was just wondering if you could give me some advice in finding employment for the year I don't really know how to go about it.  I don't mind working in primary or secondary school and I am aware that I would have to work just as much as home!!! I would be grateful for a reply !!! Thank youSmile
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