Involving Teachers in the Well Being Equation

Teachers are an increasingly scarce commodity in Australia and that seems to hold true for most of the English-speaking world.

The job is demanding, many will report being overworked, burdened by a growing list of compliance requirements and lacking support, all of which undermine their work as a teacher.

Many are thinking about leaving, which compounds the teacher supply issue, so some assistance in running schools and looking after teacher well being is one way to keep them in the profession.

There are many moving parts associated with keeping teachers happy and motivated in their jobs and while there are a lot of products out there supporting student well being, teacher well being is the other side of the coin.

TES have been active in the ANZ region for a while now, you’ll probably be using at least part of their platform if you have hired teachers or built a timetable recently, but with the business now making their presence felt here, less-known products like their staff wellbeing survey should find their way into schools.

“The staff survey means that schools can actually be made aware of teachers who are feeling perhaps a bit unhappy or unmotivated. The survey is a voice for them to speak up so principals can look at the results and offer some kind of help,” Brett Engeman the Managing Director of TES Australia says.

The survey offers a discreet way of tapping into staff sentiment when often teachers will be reluctant to talk about issues they might be experiencing. That might be for a number of reasons including a hesitance to rock the boat, an unwillingness to criticise workmates or embarrassment.

“Every couple of weeks staff receive a list of questions which are structured around how they are feeling or what could be done better in the management of the school and they can raise their voice by making a comment. The principal cannot see who wrote the comment but they can actually write back to them and start a conversation which means issues can be identified and acted on,” says Engeman.

“We receive feedback all the time that the survey has brought issues to light that the principals were not aware of whatsoever.”

In the UK, TES has become a pillar of the education system by supporting teachers in their practice, the business operates across every element of teaching and is looking to play a similar role in Australia.

“TES is the market in the UK, we have been going there for 111 years. Every school in the UK will use TES for their job board, in fact we are the job board for education in the UK.

“Everyone in the education industry should know that TES is here to hire, train and retain teachers, we’re really about staff management,” says Engeman.

“We want schools to contact us and then gain their trust through their experience of our products and then gain the confidence to go on and use the other parts of TES.

“We’re a one stop shop, no one in Australia does what we do, you can come to us with all of your online education needs.

“Obviously, there is a teacher shortage at the moment and all of our products plug into that.

“A school might have five teachers missing on any given day and one way we can help is through timetabling software which helps them rearrange their classrooms, their teaching and students. Another way that we can help is letting them recruit teachers for their school,” he says.

A wide international community has been built around the TES platform, member schools are located everywhere from the UK to Vietnam and Thailand so users can tap into a range of perspectives and experiences around education.

One way teachers can do that is through the resources portal, there are in excess of 900,000 resources created for teachers by teachers and organised by Pre-school, Primary, Secondary and Special Needs.

The resources are typically low cost to use and there is a good number of free resources available on the portal. Teachers are also able to upload resources that they have made.

Teacher professional development is also available through TES, there are three packages including Professional Studies, Subject Knowledge and Safeguarding and Duty of Care.

The TES acronym is derived from the Times Educational Supplement which continues in the form of TES Magazine, it’s a lively read and offers news and views on the issues facing education internationally.