The whole school day is a rush between meetings, preparation, writing their program, testing, Naplan, writing reports, getting and maintaining accreditation, data entry, documenting everything etc. In fact, since the introduction of the Professional Teaching Standards in 2011, no-one has any time. Everyone is so busy documenting their own teaching practice they have no time. No time to assist beginning teachers, no time to assist and support colleagues, in many cases the profession has become adversarial as teachers compete for positions and make themselves "look" employable for new advancement positions. The demands of the job have simply become too much.

"Experienced teachers have had enough," Professor Riley says.

Comments like

I don't know how much longer I can take this"

I love teaching but 80% of the time you are doing something else and not teaching."

I need a break

Teachers are leaving the profession in significant numbers — the latest figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics suggest 53 percent of people who hold a teaching degree, do not currently work in education.

Although the figure varies by locality, about 40 to 50 percent of our newest teachers leave within their first five years on the job.

Why are they leaving

These graduates are leaving for various reasons, but similar themes recur: they feel burnt out, unsupported, frustrated and disillusioned.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-02-04/why-do-teachers-leave/8234054

There must be a better way.

1. The International Baccalaureate Curriculum is a fully developed curriculum supplied to teachers, they do not program, they implement an existing program. A huge amount of teacher time could be reduced by implementing this system in Australian schools.

2. Testing should be drastically reduced and if required should be conducted online and automatically marked with results feeding into individual student reports.

3. Report writing should be streamlined, all data entry should be automated directly from existing programs students are working on, eg Mathletics, Reading Eggs etc. REport categories should be reduced. Reporting on individual outcomes removed.

4. Reduction of administrative task undertaken by teachers from the current 80% to say 20% by using automation and administrative staff.

Get back time to be creative and inspiring and collegial, and let teachers do the job they love - teaching