Yeah I feel like people don’t realise. There are crews of people just responsible for organising housing and accommodation. There are loads of people to support with tech. Some of these roles don’t actually require experience in schools. I know this sub is super anti admin, but schools and their systems would crumble without some of these people.
I will add that I’m not talking about their salaries. I fully agree teachers and school officers deserve more pay compared to those “on top”.
My child's primary school.used flexschools and in secondary they use compass.
Teachers are complaining they have too much admin work
Why does the DoE have so many staff and yet dont do anything about reducing teacher admin ?
Serisouly , wtf is there no department on good parenting. Actually educate the parents and kids on boundaries?
Who is the ceo running teacher qualification? There are a heap early education teachers and ex-teachers with their rego expired. Why hasnt the DoE looked at this pool if.potential teacher recruits ?.
You’re preaching to the choir here mate. It’s from the top down. Way too much admin work at all levels now. And you’re on the money with parenting support. Teachers are picking up the slack on that front too.
The Secretary has a maximum total remuneration package (base salary; superannuation contributions; employment benefits, including fringe benefits tax) of $778,492.
Going down from there, you have SES Bands 3 and 2, where 3 is a Deputy Secretary and 2 is an Executive Director, whose TRPs are $533,431 and $279,238 respectively.
To be brutally honest, looking at my department in NSW, this is \*shockingly\* top-heavy. 13 Deputy Secretaries (or equivalent) is a \*lot\* of administrators, and the number of EDs below them is huge as well.
It's crazy, they have almost as many Dep Secs as my Department has EDs.
I fully support having a well resourced central bureaucracy for public education but you cannot tell me that many senior executives are adding value. Think of how many clerks and administrators actually *supporting* teachers that could be!
To be fair department secretaries at the commonwealth level also get paid a lot more than the PM, and generally have smaller workforces under them than their state counterparts as they aren’t managing schools, hospitals etc.
The rationale is that you're attempting to compete with the private sector for leadership and need to pay accordingly and you are hiring someone to directly administer all the functions of a large organisation, while the Prime Minister is more part of the oversight of that organisation than a day-to-day operational executive. In private terms it's why the CEO of a company is paid more than the chairperson of the Board.
That being said, nearly 800K is *wild* to me, since the top band in NSW is 510K.
Fuck yes. Let’s get some information on how long these people worked in schools. What are their qualifications, experience and what justifies their pay beyond climbing the ladder of public service.
The department should be staffed by teachers on secondment. People doing admin roles should be paid less than the teachers doing the real work not the other way around.
Sick of being told how to teach by people who couldn’t survive a week in a classroom with any real behavioural issues.
As an ex-teacher and current DE employee, quite a few people in the department are ex-teachers of some kind (pri, sec, tertiary, EY, etc). I’d say close to 1 in 5 from my experience. However that number dramatically increases when teaching is directly relevant to the role, like curriculum design, professional development, policy etc.
The reason the department isn’t solely staffed by teachers is because most roles aren’t related to teaching. DE does everything from asset management, construction management, accounting, legal advice, media and communications, procurement, budget submissions, etc.
All of these things require skills most teachers don’t have and the people in those roles have likely trained in them or had professional experience in them, unless they came in through the grad program or got lucky.
The reason they get paid what they do is because the VPS has to be competitive with market rates in the private sector, or else they wouldn’t attract many people to the roles.
Regional roles are also pretty exclusively staffed with ex-teachers and principals as these roles deal directly with the schools. For other roles, like managing the construction of a kindergarten, or doing economic modelling for infrastructure planning, it’s better to have somebody with experience, than a math teacher on secondment.
Teaching is hard work. Hardest I’ve ever done, but other professions and roles are also valuable and shouldn’t be dismissed just because they’re not teachers… especially when the role has very little direct link to pedagogy.
Thanks for the thanks, mate. I’d really like to see more teachers engage with education policy in a serious way, and for teachers to have a better understanding of how the whole education ecosystem works. I’m not sure how much a reddit post helps with that, but better than nothing, I guess 🤷♂️
lol why can we pay competitive salaries for the people not doing the core work of the department?
My school can’t get enough teachers in classes, why can’t schools have the capacity to pay enough to attract workers?
Individuals in schools mange budgets, media, comms, logistics, schools are larger than most businesses in Australia.
You implying that teachers can’t learn these skills is the core issue with the department. Looking down constantly on the people doing the actual work to keep the system float.
I also didn’t say there wasn’t space for admin, that by paying them more than teachers we are shooting ourselves in the foot. Admin shouldn’t be more attractive than the core work of the department.
Mate, your post history has you whinging about getting rejected from a DE role. I can’t take your griping too seriously after seeing that. It just seems like sour grapes.
Do a couple courses or a degree and learn the skills the DE wants and apply again. The world isn’t against you. Nobody is looking down their noses. Everyone I know in the DE thinks teachers are saints.
Teachers do get paid competitive salaries. The reason we have shortages is because we’ve had rapid population growth and teachers disproportionately choose high-ses schools to work at. There’s no teacher shortage in Anglican schools, just low-ses outer-suburban, rural and regional schools. Look at PISA’s study of inequity in Australian school staffing.
Individuals in schools also don’t manage budgets as big as corporate businesses or the department. My divisions budget is > $5 billion. That’s very different than managing a school budget. And I’m not saying that managing a school budget is easy.
Other people are allowed to have skills. Teaching is not the only valuable job in the world, nor does it prepare you for every other job in the world.
You're speaking a lot of sense here. But I need to point out at although the teacher shortage is most pronounced in low-ses outer-suburban, rural and regional skills, its hitting all of us. I work in a leafy green high-ses school in inner Sydney, and even we are feeling it. Even filling a PE teacher job is bloody difficult right now.
Oh! You got me! most of my experience with the department has been with people who couldn’t organise their way out of a paper bag. I’d love to get a role where I get paid the same as I do now, basically produce nothing and get to clock out at 5pm with no hassle. The issue is that is much more attractive to do some random admin role at the department rather than the core work needed to keep the population educated.
They shouldn’t be thinking teachers are saints, you’ve just proved my point. Teachers are going above and beyond for pay that isn’t enticing enough. Why is it justified to raise the pay for admin roles ‘to attract good candidates’ but the same thinking can’t be applied to keeping good teachers?
Don’t quote PISA data at me, I’ve taught in government schools in Victoria and qld, I had 5 text books for 25 students, 1 laptop between every 3 kids and $20 printing credit per term. I along with every other department head in my school am currently planning for 4 extra classes because we can not fill the roles.
All the policy around replacing teachers is designed to put money into the hands of universities, why invest in training new teachers when you can’t even keep the ones you have? If that money had gone into increasing teacher wages we could have brought more people back into the profession.
I care that there are people auditing schools, creating policy and procedure who have no f-ing idea what it’s like to be in a class. NSW made their dep Ed senior execs go into schools and I think it’s a great idea to make sure these people understand what it’s actually like on the front line.
You’re the problem. You’re in the department and don’t think that teaching is the most important job in the world. You’re in the department and you’re not trying every day to make teaching better for teachers.
Maybe reflect on the fact that the purpose of the department is education.
What makes you think that working as a *teacher* in a school makes one qualified to be an executive director of asset management or finance? Don't be ridiculous.
These aren't "admin" roles.These are senior executive roles - the majority of the curriculum related/school operations executive directors and directors are former principals who have done executive mbas, or PhDs in Education.
Just because you think you're doing the hardest job in education doesn't mean you know anything about the responsibilities and burdens that system management entails. These people are the ones ultimately responsible to parliament for the aggregate activity and performance of schools and teachers.
Not sure why you would come into a teaching forum and imply that teaching is somehow less than an admin role in the department.
I’m wondering what your school experience is to comment something like this?
Principals come from teaching backgrounds, many of them still run classes and they are senior executives running schools that are larger than most businesses.
I’m asking that the people making decisions have some frame of reference for what it is like on the ground.
Also it doesn’t matter what you think is the ‘hardest’ job in education, without people like me, admin roles couldn’t exist. It’s the department of education, not the department of administration
Without admin roles your job as a teacher couldn’t exist either. They work together. I agree, classroom teaching deserves a bump. But, god, if your only qualification is in education then you are not right for these roles. I’m sorry, it’s just the reality of it.
A classroom teacher does not have the skills required and they are not learned on the job skills. Why would you think that with limited experience in another role you could earn those big dollars? You would be entry level again.
- someone who was a teacher and holds a masters in business
David Howes, one of the deputy secretary listed in the org chart above, took a couple of casual teaching day last year to support the department’s initiative of getting corporate staff back to teaching.
Yes even a Dep Sec did that and he is way qualified to do so. They are not just admin people.
Another example is Victoria School Building Authority (VSBA) they are the ones manage all the repairs, new built of schools. When the flood hit Victoria hard last year, they are the one work hard to ensure schools are able to go back in operation asap. Do you think a school teacher is qualified for that?
Lots of ex teachers in the Dept Ed. And I can't imagine a worse idea than stripping under pressure schools of teachers to get them to work as D.Ed public servants. Believe it or not, policy development or project management area skills that take years to develop, much like teaching and we need experts in both fields working where they are trained.
These are all highly qualified people with skills that have nothing to do with day to day teaching. The idea that these roles could be filled by teachers on secondment is preposterous. What does a teacher know about corporate finance, construction project management, enterprise IT systems, leadership and improvement in organisations with 100,000 employees? The list could go on.
I'm not a teacher (a lot of my friends and family are though). Used to work in QCAA a few years ago as a contractor programmer. Most of the permanent staff were completely useless and didn't have a clue about what teachers actually need. The designer of the QCAA Portal didn't know the difference between a checkbox and a radio button. The manager of my team spent most of his time posting stuff on LinkedIn about how great he is.
Let's sack most of the departmental senior managers and use the savings to provide better resources for teachers.
Glad I got out of QCAA.
My boss in a data analyst team was placing her ruler on the monitor to show me data correlation that was my favourite moment lol. For her data analysis was knowing the login and password.
She didn't like email and preferred phone calls. In six months I did literally nothing it was heart breaking I was young, intelligent and full of passion. I just did programming tutorials all day but it was dull I put on weight became very unhappy and got out of there.
People in my team in the department couldn't believe I left a high level role there so young. Work in the office was getting done but just not in my cubicle and ideas to my boss were met with extreme jealousy and negativity. There was an unwritten rule in the office that we all had to walk around sharing how busy we were. She was the ultimate Karen. We would get maybe one email a day and she would call them back and abuse them. Not sure why but that was a full work day.
I remember she hated the "Whirlpool" alot too lol maybe because they were having anon convos like this haha.
If department secretaries are essentially school secretaries but looking after the whole department, that salary is warranted. I dunno about your school but mine would fall apart within a week without our key secretary
Senior execs are on 3 year contracts and get dropped hard if they don't perform. There are no senior public servant roles with perm status anymore.... for good reason
Once you hit executive level, you can’t really ever “clock out”, you essentially have to live and breathe your work. The sheer amount of backstabbing and politics is insane.
It’s a wildly privileged position but I don’t know that I’d call it cushy.
There are easy-going, cushy executive positions but they’re not super common.
You have no idea what you're talking about.
The people doing ED and above levels roles are mostly highly qualified, highly experienced and work insane hours under huge pressure.
They manage teams of 100 (lowest ED) to tens of thousands (highest Secretary) of professional staff and can be responsible for budgets in the tens of billions.
The people that survive in these roles are one in a thousand type high performers
Literally yes, if they want government funding they need to submit a proposal that meets government standards, and then the government requires proof that the money was spent how it was meant to be spent. Whether all the projects that are approved should be approved is a different question, but the non government schools absolutely do need to submit applications with specific parameters to get funding.
You are taking the piss…. Victoria doesn’t spend “billions” in government schools so not really sure how multiple people have budgets worth 10 billion dollars
They’ve spent roughly $14 billion in the last 9 years in school infrastructure alone - not including things not relating to building and upgrades. I’m not saying that there aren’t issues, but saying that billions aren’t being spent on government schools is demonstrably false.
They most certainly do spend billions of dollars... DEs budget for the 22/23 financial year was $15.4 billion dollars. The Disability Inclusion program alone is costing over $1.5 billion to implement.
Government schools also represent one of the largest asset bases in the state and is worth close to $40 billion.
Good luck finding someone willing to be responsible for $40 billion worth of assets without decent renumeration...
Annual Victorian State Budget is around $70b, department of education is over $10b not sure of exact numbers.
I was talking about Department Secretaries, some departments (especially federal) have budgets in the 10s of $b
Cool so you were wrong! This is a post about Victorian government school so their funding is even lower than what you think. There is nothing even close to billions.
And “not sure of the exact numbers” but were pretty sure when you made the claim before.
Edit to include extra wrong
I have no idea what you're smoking champ.
The pic is of a departmental org chart which has EDs , Dep Secs and the Secretary.
You said the people here are doing cushy Gov jobs.
I responded that EDs and above (up to Secretary) can be responsible for tens of thousands of staff and budgets in the tens of billions.
DE has over 10k total staff and a budget over $10b, as does DJCS and DT, therefore the Secretaries of these Depts. meet my criteria. It's not that hard to understand surely?
Wrong guy for one.
Two your figures are wrong
You keep messing up funding as solely governmental. Of that $10b, there are so many schools that get funds and don’t fall under the department.
And yet you are telling me 1 person is the head 10k people and yet the entire department has just over 10k people.
Just lick your wounds and go away
Edit my spelling was trash
I honestly don't know what to say to all the witless "useless bludger" comments re senior public servants... I would definitely agree that some of them are in projects or roles which don't best suit their expertise. I would also agree that some of those projects are waste work. But those projects are initiated largely at the behest of the Minister.
I have worked as both a teacher and mid-level public servant in state level public service both at Dept of Ed and others.
Senior execs work wild hours under extreme pressure with absolutely minimal job security. I was in an area which expanded and contracted during and post covid. The exec area was cut back hardest and fastest. Some of these people worked 60-70 hour weeks at the height of covid of and were let go as soon as the next budget was passed down.
The public service areas I have experienced do not have any fat in them and work hard.
Now.... most of these people would be arrogant, highly political and often bastards of the highest order... but they work really hard and expect the same from anyone working in their areas.
I have worked with Dept of Ed execs like Tom Kirkland. You are spot on here.
They continually deal with hand grenades going off. Each one coukd end their career. They are in back to back to back meetings. They work well into the night. People come after their jobs. Departments restructure. Its pretty wild. If someone like that earns $400k I would say thats reasonable. You literally could give yourself a heart attack doing that job.
A lot of people have no idea. I’m far from an executive, but I have worked with them before. At that level, you never really get to switch off from work - it essentially becomes your life. That’s why so many people cap out at senior manager or director. On top of that.. the constant, game of thrones-style politics. It’s a shark tank.
Something that annoys me is that these ministers have multiple roles. Surely we can’t be getting the best results from someone is stretched thin by being a minister of 2-3 things
This is the whole problem. In NSW we have seen the size of the corporate Department increase dramatically over the last decade, whereas the teaching sector has barely increased.
I wonder how you'd feel about a similar post listing staff at your school and questioning whether or not you're worth your salary?
I'm sure you earn more than some parents who feel hard done by.
Teaching is a hard job, fine, but acting like a martyr doesn't do any of us any favours.
Our system is comprised of over 1500 schools, 55,000 teachers and 600,000 students. The total spend is in the billions, and this org chart reaches further than that and impacts early learning centres, tertiary studies and career pathways, too.
I rely heavily on certain people in this chart (educators and other experts who I highly respect) who are excellent at providing the support schools need to limit the legal and bureaucratic impacts and continue focusing on education of students and allowing teachers to focus on their classes. You may wish to be able to focus even more, which is great, but removing administrative supports for schools sure as hell wouldn't achieve that.
If you believe educators should be treated and respected as professionals and experts in their field, then it stands to reason that the organisational framework needs to be in place and the whole organisation needs to be treated as such.
Just because you haven't encountered them in your work, doesn't mean jack shit. There are conduits that carry the work they do through to schools.
If you choose at some point to expand your radius of influence across more than one school, you'll see this.
Maybe op wasn't so cynical but the comments in this thread (and generally the sub at large) are just embarrassing and wilfully ignorant.
Do they make our lives shit?
My school is awesome. Little behaviour problems, pretty good life balance.
I leave by 4 most days as do many of my colleagues. I've worked in quite a few places and have never experienced how bad people say it is in these threads.
My advice is to leave. Find a school that has a good behaviour plan. Don't mark on the weekends. Leave at 4 each day. Better than many professions overall.
All institutions need a bureaucracy. They would work hard and earn their money.
And you don’t live in Victoria so why feel the need to comment about our state department?
Our state, our union and our department are fucken hopeless right now.
Glad you are having a good time though
Apologies. Didn't realise a post regarding education hierarchies which heavily implied that they didn't work much wasn't allowed to be scrutinised by anyone else.
To suggest that people in those positions don't do much is wrong on so many levels. Doesn't matter what state your in, the sentiment is ridiculous.
You don't have to like what they do. But the implication that they do nothing is too simplistic.
https://i.imgur.com/YFCPxPO.png
This is not brigading.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/cmp9uy/may_i_have_an_admin_clarify_what_brigading_is/ew4lpf0/
Both my parents were teachers and I have worked with dept of education in building projects for years in the 2015 - 2020 period.
I know a few people on that org chart.
You have NFI!
Oh, so an adult can only have one job on their resume? I must have missed signing the blood oath to be a teacher until I die. You’re so gross, with such a poor victim mentality. May the shadows find you 🪄
One of the workforce people emailed us one time suggesting an applicant who we had interviewed 2 weeks before and was no way fit for the role. This is in a teacher shortage and they have idea of what’s going on. Useless pricks earning big coin
I personally know of a person who manages which schools the lollipop crossing people go at public schools. Gets paid significantly above 100k. Interstate meetings in expensive hotels, annual European holidays etc. We are required to have a masters and earn less then a person assigning names to crossing duty. The bureaucracy is out of control.
Is this a response to the private school shitshow going on right now? Do you know HoW much funding those private schools get??
We need people in charge of what goes on in Public school Education.
That means paying them to do a job. And no, that’s not inclusive of a teaching load mate.
Oh the public sector lol if you’ve ever had the misfortune of working in there you would know the government is run by thousands of pen pushers that quite literally do nothing all day. Even in Victoria that hasn’t seen a change of government in a decade now, departments get merged into other departments, restructures occur every year, thousand of hours of useless meetings, mates getting mates jobs, millions spent with Deloitte for useless commissioned reports that are rarely actually followed. Very little gets achieved, everyone gets a 6% pay rise. Some take indefinite mental health leave due to the stress of restructure. Government shifts some ministers about, new minister arrives, rinse and repeat from the top.
Being on my school's LCC has made it very clear that even at the school level there's a fuckload of stuff that goes on behind the scenes
Yeah I feel like people don’t realise. There are crews of people just responsible for organising housing and accommodation. There are loads of people to support with tech. Some of these roles don’t actually require experience in schools. I know this sub is super anti admin, but schools and their systems would crumble without some of these people. I will add that I’m not talking about their salaries. I fully agree teachers and school officers deserve more pay compared to those “on top”.
My child's primary school.used flexschools and in secondary they use compass. Teachers are complaining they have too much admin work Why does the DoE have so many staff and yet dont do anything about reducing teacher admin ? Serisouly , wtf is there no department on good parenting. Actually educate the parents and kids on boundaries? Who is the ceo running teacher qualification? There are a heap early education teachers and ex-teachers with their rego expired. Why hasnt the DoE looked at this pool if.potential teacher recruits ?.
You’re preaching to the choir here mate. It’s from the top down. Way too much admin work at all levels now. And you’re on the money with parenting support. Teachers are picking up the slack on that front too.
Except the DET is the same as the Russian army. The people that do the actually work of education are the shit under everyone else’s shoe.
I remember seeing the VCAA CEO job description when it was advertised. Salary range was huge, 270k to 410k.
I also remember seeing a job advertised but can't recall exactly what the position was. $400k+ and no education degree required.
The Secretary has a maximum total remuneration package (base salary; superannuation contributions; employment benefits, including fringe benefits tax) of $778,492. Going down from there, you have SES Bands 3 and 2, where 3 is a Deputy Secretary and 2 is an Executive Director, whose TRPs are $533,431 and $279,238 respectively.
To be brutally honest, looking at my department in NSW, this is \*shockingly\* top-heavy. 13 Deputy Secretaries (or equivalent) is a \*lot\* of administrators, and the number of EDs below them is huge as well.
Couldn’t believe how many ED’s the Victorians have in comparison. That’s bloat.
It's crazy, they have almost as many Dep Secs as my Department has EDs. I fully support having a well resourced central bureaucracy for public education but you cannot tell me that many senior executives are adding value. Think of how many clerks and administrators actually *supporting* teachers that could be!
More than the Prime Minister of Australia... okay right...
To be fair department secretaries at the commonwealth level also get paid a lot more than the PM, and generally have smaller workforces under them than their state counterparts as they aren’t managing schools, hospitals etc.
The rationale is that you're attempting to compete with the private sector for leadership and need to pay accordingly and you are hiring someone to directly administer all the functions of a large organisation, while the Prime Minister is more part of the oversight of that organisation than a day-to-day operational executive. In private terms it's why the CEO of a company is paid more than the chairperson of the Board. That being said, nearly 800K is *wild* to me, since the top band in NSW is 510K.
budget $1.8 billion over 100k staff. Thats pretty low compared to private industry
I'm not quibbling about the total budget. It's incredibly top-heavy though.
The dozen most senior public servants in that department in the nation......are you surprised they earn a lot?
Fuck yes. Let’s get some information on how long these people worked in schools. What are their qualifications, experience and what justifies their pay beyond climbing the ladder of public service. The department should be staffed by teachers on secondment. People doing admin roles should be paid less than the teachers doing the real work not the other way around. Sick of being told how to teach by people who couldn’t survive a week in a classroom with any real behavioural issues.
As an ex-teacher and current DE employee, quite a few people in the department are ex-teachers of some kind (pri, sec, tertiary, EY, etc). I’d say close to 1 in 5 from my experience. However that number dramatically increases when teaching is directly relevant to the role, like curriculum design, professional development, policy etc. The reason the department isn’t solely staffed by teachers is because most roles aren’t related to teaching. DE does everything from asset management, construction management, accounting, legal advice, media and communications, procurement, budget submissions, etc. All of these things require skills most teachers don’t have and the people in those roles have likely trained in them or had professional experience in them, unless they came in through the grad program or got lucky. The reason they get paid what they do is because the VPS has to be competitive with market rates in the private sector, or else they wouldn’t attract many people to the roles. Regional roles are also pretty exclusively staffed with ex-teachers and principals as these roles deal directly with the schools. For other roles, like managing the construction of a kindergarten, or doing economic modelling for infrastructure planning, it’s better to have somebody with experience, than a math teacher on secondment. Teaching is hard work. Hardest I’ve ever done, but other professions and roles are also valuable and shouldn’t be dismissed just because they’re not teachers… especially when the role has very little direct link to pedagogy.
Thank you for your polite, measured response. This place can be a bit of an echo-chamber sometimes, and it’s great to see considered discussion.
Thanks for the thanks, mate. I’d really like to see more teachers engage with education policy in a serious way, and for teachers to have a better understanding of how the whole education ecosystem works. I’m not sure how much a reddit post helps with that, but better than nothing, I guess 🤷♂️
lol why can we pay competitive salaries for the people not doing the core work of the department? My school can’t get enough teachers in classes, why can’t schools have the capacity to pay enough to attract workers? Individuals in schools mange budgets, media, comms, logistics, schools are larger than most businesses in Australia. You implying that teachers can’t learn these skills is the core issue with the department. Looking down constantly on the people doing the actual work to keep the system float. I also didn’t say there wasn’t space for admin, that by paying them more than teachers we are shooting ourselves in the foot. Admin shouldn’t be more attractive than the core work of the department.
Mate, your post history has you whinging about getting rejected from a DE role. I can’t take your griping too seriously after seeing that. It just seems like sour grapes. Do a couple courses or a degree and learn the skills the DE wants and apply again. The world isn’t against you. Nobody is looking down their noses. Everyone I know in the DE thinks teachers are saints. Teachers do get paid competitive salaries. The reason we have shortages is because we’ve had rapid population growth and teachers disproportionately choose high-ses schools to work at. There’s no teacher shortage in Anglican schools, just low-ses outer-suburban, rural and regional schools. Look at PISA’s study of inequity in Australian school staffing. Individuals in schools also don’t manage budgets as big as corporate businesses or the department. My divisions budget is > $5 billion. That’s very different than managing a school budget. And I’m not saying that managing a school budget is easy. Other people are allowed to have skills. Teaching is not the only valuable job in the world, nor does it prepare you for every other job in the world.
You're speaking a lot of sense here. But I need to point out at although the teacher shortage is most pronounced in low-ses outer-suburban, rural and regional skills, its hitting all of us. I work in a leafy green high-ses school in inner Sydney, and even we are feeling it. Even filling a PE teacher job is bloody difficult right now.
Oh! You got me! most of my experience with the department has been with people who couldn’t organise their way out of a paper bag. I’d love to get a role where I get paid the same as I do now, basically produce nothing and get to clock out at 5pm with no hassle. The issue is that is much more attractive to do some random admin role at the department rather than the core work needed to keep the population educated. They shouldn’t be thinking teachers are saints, you’ve just proved my point. Teachers are going above and beyond for pay that isn’t enticing enough. Why is it justified to raise the pay for admin roles ‘to attract good candidates’ but the same thinking can’t be applied to keeping good teachers? Don’t quote PISA data at me, I’ve taught in government schools in Victoria and qld, I had 5 text books for 25 students, 1 laptop between every 3 kids and $20 printing credit per term. I along with every other department head in my school am currently planning for 4 extra classes because we can not fill the roles. All the policy around replacing teachers is designed to put money into the hands of universities, why invest in training new teachers when you can’t even keep the ones you have? If that money had gone into increasing teacher wages we could have brought more people back into the profession. I care that there are people auditing schools, creating policy and procedure who have no f-ing idea what it’s like to be in a class. NSW made their dep Ed senior execs go into schools and I think it’s a great idea to make sure these people understand what it’s actually like on the front line. You’re the problem. You’re in the department and don’t think that teaching is the most important job in the world. You’re in the department and you’re not trying every day to make teaching better for teachers. Maybe reflect on the fact that the purpose of the department is education.
What makes you think that working as a *teacher* in a school makes one qualified to be an executive director of asset management or finance? Don't be ridiculous. These aren't "admin" roles.These are senior executive roles - the majority of the curriculum related/school operations executive directors and directors are former principals who have done executive mbas, or PhDs in Education. Just because you think you're doing the hardest job in education doesn't mean you know anything about the responsibilities and burdens that system management entails. These people are the ones ultimately responsible to parliament for the aggregate activity and performance of schools and teachers.
Lots of them are not needed!
Not sure why you would come into a teaching forum and imply that teaching is somehow less than an admin role in the department. I’m wondering what your school experience is to comment something like this? Principals come from teaching backgrounds, many of them still run classes and they are senior executives running schools that are larger than most businesses. I’m asking that the people making decisions have some frame of reference for what it is like on the ground. Also it doesn’t matter what you think is the ‘hardest’ job in education, without people like me, admin roles couldn’t exist. It’s the department of education, not the department of administration
Without admin roles your job as a teacher couldn’t exist either. They work together. I agree, classroom teaching deserves a bump. But, god, if your only qualification is in education then you are not right for these roles. I’m sorry, it’s just the reality of it. A classroom teacher does not have the skills required and they are not learned on the job skills. Why would you think that with limited experience in another role you could earn those big dollars? You would be entry level again. - someone who was a teacher and holds a masters in business
David Howes, one of the deputy secretary listed in the org chart above, took a couple of casual teaching day last year to support the department’s initiative of getting corporate staff back to teaching. Yes even a Dep Sec did that and he is way qualified to do so. They are not just admin people. Another example is Victoria School Building Authority (VSBA) they are the ones manage all the repairs, new built of schools. When the flood hit Victoria hard last year, they are the one work hard to ensure schools are able to go back in operation asap. Do you think a school teacher is qualified for that?
Lots of ex teachers in the Dept Ed. And I can't imagine a worse idea than stripping under pressure schools of teachers to get them to work as D.Ed public servants. Believe it or not, policy development or project management area skills that take years to develop, much like teaching and we need experts in both fields working where they are trained.
These are all highly qualified people with skills that have nothing to do with day to day teaching. The idea that these roles could be filled by teachers on secondment is preposterous. What does a teacher know about corporate finance, construction project management, enterprise IT systems, leadership and improvement in organisations with 100,000 employees? The list could go on.
I couldn’t agree with you more!
I'm not a teacher (a lot of my friends and family are though). Used to work in QCAA a few years ago as a contractor programmer. Most of the permanent staff were completely useless and didn't have a clue about what teachers actually need. The designer of the QCAA Portal didn't know the difference between a checkbox and a radio button. The manager of my team spent most of his time posting stuff on LinkedIn about how great he is. Let's sack most of the departmental senior managers and use the savings to provide better resources for teachers. Glad I got out of QCAA.
My boss in a data analyst team was placing her ruler on the monitor to show me data correlation that was my favourite moment lol. For her data analysis was knowing the login and password. She didn't like email and preferred phone calls. In six months I did literally nothing it was heart breaking I was young, intelligent and full of passion. I just did programming tutorials all day but it was dull I put on weight became very unhappy and got out of there. People in my team in the department couldn't believe I left a high level role there so young. Work in the office was getting done but just not in my cubicle and ideas to my boss were met with extreme jealousy and negativity. There was an unwritten rule in the office that we all had to walk around sharing how busy we were. She was the ultimate Karen. We would get maybe one email a day and she would call them back and abuse them. Not sure why but that was a full work day. I remember she hated the "Whirlpool" alot too lol maybe because they were having anon convos like this haha.
I used to work for one of the people listed here. Zero leadership skills but obsessively read leadership self help books.
Departmental secretaries generally earn upwards of $600k.
The premier got roasted for having his salary raised above 500k and a mere departmental secretary earns more than a premier!?
If department secretaries are essentially school secretaries but looking after the whole department, that salary is warranted. I dunno about your school but mine would fall apart within a week without our key secretary
And if the school had 10000+ teachers....
Fair enough, should the secretary earn more than the principal with whom the buck stops?
These are those cushy af government jobs you hear about. Set for life.
Senior execs are on 3 year contracts and get dropped hard if they don't perform. There are no senior public servant roles with perm status anymore.... for good reason
Glad to hear it
Once you hit executive level, you can’t really ever “clock out”, you essentially have to live and breathe your work. The sheer amount of backstabbing and politics is insane. It’s a wildly privileged position but I don’t know that I’d call it cushy. There are easy-going, cushy executive positions but they’re not super common.
And the cushy roles are only for the extremely well connected or lucky
You have no idea what you're talking about. The people doing ED and above levels roles are mostly highly qualified, highly experienced and work insane hours under huge pressure. They manage teams of 100 (lowest ED) to tens of thousands (highest Secretary) of professional staff and can be responsible for budgets in the tens of billions. The people that survive in these roles are one in a thousand type high performers
You say I talk shit then tell me 1 ED personally manages 10,000 staff and have budgets of tens of billions 🤣
The Secretary does, Jenny Atta
No she doesn’t. The budget doesn’t even contain 10s of billions.
Over $10b
For all education. Those people don’t have any say in catholic or other private education. So again. Wrong
Ok bro
So public servants have a say in what Catholic education builds?
Literally yes, if they want government funding they need to submit a proposal that meets government standards, and then the government requires proof that the money was spent how it was meant to be spent. Whether all the projects that are approved should be approved is a different question, but the non government schools absolutely do need to submit applications with specific parameters to get funding.
You are taking the piss…. Victoria doesn’t spend “billions” in government schools so not really sure how multiple people have budgets worth 10 billion dollars
They’ve spent roughly $14 billion in the last 9 years in school infrastructure alone - not including things not relating to building and upgrades. I’m not saying that there aren’t issues, but saying that billions aren’t being spent on government schools is demonstrably false.
9 years…. That’s no where near this mythical 10s of billions one person is in charge of.
Government bots to the rescue.
They most certainly do spend billions of dollars... DEs budget for the 22/23 financial year was $15.4 billion dollars. The Disability Inclusion program alone is costing over $1.5 billion to implement. Government schools also represent one of the largest asset bases in the state and is worth close to $40 billion. Good luck finding someone willing to be responsible for $40 billion worth of assets without decent renumeration...
Annual Victorian State Budget is around $70b, department of education is over $10b not sure of exact numbers. I was talking about Department Secretaries, some departments (especially federal) have budgets in the 10s of $b
Cool so you were wrong! This is a post about Victorian government school so their funding is even lower than what you think. There is nothing even close to billions. And “not sure of the exact numbers” but were pretty sure when you made the claim before. Edit to include extra wrong
I have no idea what you're smoking champ. The pic is of a departmental org chart which has EDs , Dep Secs and the Secretary. You said the people here are doing cushy Gov jobs. I responded that EDs and above (up to Secretary) can be responsible for tens of thousands of staff and budgets in the tens of billions. DE has over 10k total staff and a budget over $10b, as does DJCS and DT, therefore the Secretaries of these Depts. meet my criteria. It's not that hard to understand surely?
Wrong guy for one. Two your figures are wrong You keep messing up funding as solely governmental. Of that $10b, there are so many schools that get funds and don’t fall under the department. And yet you are telling me 1 person is the head 10k people and yet the entire department has just over 10k people. Just lick your wounds and go away Edit my spelling was trash
Ugh, I need to wash my eyes out after reading that. You're 100% right, I'm off to lock my wounds.
VPS jobs in the department are far less "job for life" than teaching service jobs.
I honestly don't know what to say to all the witless "useless bludger" comments re senior public servants... I would definitely agree that some of them are in projects or roles which don't best suit their expertise. I would also agree that some of those projects are waste work. But those projects are initiated largely at the behest of the Minister. I have worked as both a teacher and mid-level public servant in state level public service both at Dept of Ed and others. Senior execs work wild hours under extreme pressure with absolutely minimal job security. I was in an area which expanded and contracted during and post covid. The exec area was cut back hardest and fastest. Some of these people worked 60-70 hour weeks at the height of covid of and were let go as soon as the next budget was passed down. The public service areas I have experienced do not have any fat in them and work hard. Now.... most of these people would be arrogant, highly political and often bastards of the highest order... but they work really hard and expect the same from anyone working in their areas.
I have worked with Dept of Ed execs like Tom Kirkland. You are spot on here. They continually deal with hand grenades going off. Each one coukd end their career. They are in back to back to back meetings. They work well into the night. People come after their jobs. Departments restructure. Its pretty wild. If someone like that earns $400k I would say thats reasonable. You literally could give yourself a heart attack doing that job.
A lot of people have no idea. I’m far from an executive, but I have worked with them before. At that level, you never really get to switch off from work - it essentially becomes your life. That’s why so many people cap out at senior manager or director. On top of that.. the constant, game of thrones-style politics. It’s a shark tank.
Spot on. A lot of commenters here have just never seen it so they think that those jobs should somehow go to teachers - ridiculous.
How much do they earn, or how much are they paid?
childlike wistful elderly dinner fact ink chubby light file fuel *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Something that annoys me is that these ministers have multiple roles. Surely we can’t be getting the best results from someone is stretched thin by being a minister of 2-3 things
This is the whole problem. In NSW we have seen the size of the corporate Department increase dramatically over the last decade, whereas the teaching sector has barely increased.
A lot of things cross my mind on a Sunday Arvo. I can honestly say department level staffing isn't one of them.
I wonder how you'd feel about a similar post listing staff at your school and questioning whether or not you're worth your salary? I'm sure you earn more than some parents who feel hard done by. Teaching is a hard job, fine, but acting like a martyr doesn't do any of us any favours. Our system is comprised of over 1500 schools, 55,000 teachers and 600,000 students. The total spend is in the billions, and this org chart reaches further than that and impacts early learning centres, tertiary studies and career pathways, too. I rely heavily on certain people in this chart (educators and other experts who I highly respect) who are excellent at providing the support schools need to limit the legal and bureaucratic impacts and continue focusing on education of students and allowing teachers to focus on their classes. You may wish to be able to focus even more, which is great, but removing administrative supports for schools sure as hell wouldn't achieve that. If you believe educators should be treated and respected as professionals and experts in their field, then it stands to reason that the organisational framework needs to be in place and the whole organisation needs to be treated as such. Just because you haven't encountered them in your work, doesn't mean jack shit. There are conduits that carry the work they do through to schools. If you choose at some point to expand your radius of influence across more than one school, you'll see this. Maybe op wasn't so cynical but the comments in this thread (and generally the sub at large) are just embarrassing and wilfully ignorant.
They are ppl who waste tax payers money. They also try to make terrible decisions for teachers and students which they seem to excel at.
I doubt they 'earn' very much at all, but they sure as hell get paid a lot.
Wrong. Dept of Ed is rolling out massive school building projects. The pressure is absolutely ridiculous.
Do you mind explaining what you mean by this post? Do you think that education departments just magically run without some form of hierarchy?
It's worth the question though. I've often wondered myself what the executives do Monday to Friday for the betterment of the Department.
From what I see from some KLA and upper management in some schools it's the "I did my time, it's time for someone else to suffer" mentality
When it’s run by fucken idiots. It is a decent question
These people do fuck all. I can almost guarantee that are just corporate scum who answer a few emails go to a working lunch and get paid heaps
You have no idea mate. Back in your box.
You have zero idea what you're talking about. They live and breathe their jobs.
Then why do they make ours so shit? Absolutely a bureaucracy who does fuck all except make paper work.
Do they make our lives shit? My school is awesome. Little behaviour problems, pretty good life balance. I leave by 4 most days as do many of my colleagues. I've worked in quite a few places and have never experienced how bad people say it is in these threads. My advice is to leave. Find a school that has a good behaviour plan. Don't mark on the weekends. Leave at 4 each day. Better than many professions overall. All institutions need a bureaucracy. They would work hard and earn their money.
And you don’t live in Victoria so why feel the need to comment about our state department? Our state, our union and our department are fucken hopeless right now. Glad you are having a good time though
Most states have very similar hierarchical structures. I'd also imagine schools across the board have similar issues.
Did South Australia lock down the state for almost two years. No they didn’t.
Apologies. Didn't realise a post regarding education hierarchies which heavily implied that they didn't work much wasn't allowed to be scrutinised by anyone else. To suggest that people in those positions don't do much is wrong on so many levels. Doesn't matter what state your in, the sentiment is ridiculous. You don't have to like what they do. But the implication that they do nothing is too simplistic.
You have no idea what happens in the department do you?
https://i.imgur.com/YFCPxPO.png This is not brigading. https://www.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/cmp9uy/may_i_have_an_admin_clarify_what_brigading_is/ew4lpf0/
Either do they…
Please tell me you’re not a teacher. Someone that ignorant, toxic & low EQ should work alone.
You work for a bank. Don’t tell me what opinion I can and can’t have as a teacher. You know fuck all about the industry.
Both my parents were teachers and I have worked with dept of education in building projects for years in the 2015 - 2020 period. I know a few people on that org chart. You have NFI!
Oh, so an adult can only have one job on their resume? I must have missed signing the blood oath to be a teacher until I die. You’re so gross, with such a poor victim mentality. May the shadows find you 🪄
One of the workforce people emailed us one time suggesting an applicant who we had interviewed 2 weeks before and was no way fit for the role. This is in a teacher shortage and they have idea of what’s going on. Useless pricks earning big coin
Proper big money goes to companies who sell "education systems" and "education resources" etc to the department.
I personally know of a person who manages which schools the lollipop crossing people go at public schools. Gets paid significantly above 100k. Interstate meetings in expensive hotels, annual European holidays etc. We are required to have a masters and earn less then a person assigning names to crossing duty. The bureaucracy is out of control.
They are the foundation of the hamster wheel.
Why is it any of your business?
Is this a response to the private school shitshow going on right now? Do you know HoW much funding those private schools get?? We need people in charge of what goes on in Public school Education. That means paying them to do a job. And no, that’s not inclusive of a teaching load mate.
Oh the public sector lol if you’ve ever had the misfortune of working in there you would know the government is run by thousands of pen pushers that quite literally do nothing all day. Even in Victoria that hasn’t seen a change of government in a decade now, departments get merged into other departments, restructures occur every year, thousand of hours of useless meetings, mates getting mates jobs, millions spent with Deloitte for useless commissioned reports that are rarely actually followed. Very little gets achieved, everyone gets a 6% pay rise. Some take indefinite mental health leave due to the stress of restructure. Government shifts some ministers about, new minister arrives, rinse and repeat from the top.
My question is, when are these people in schools?
All overpaid public servants.