Study finds 90% of Australian teachers can't afford to live where they teach:
The teaching profession is already struggling with shortages and a lack of new candidates in a situation widely regarded as a crisis. Now, research warns that teachers are being priced out of housing near their schools, with many areas even too expensive for educators at the top of the pay scale.
The study, published recently in The Australian Educational Researcher analyzed quarterly house sales and rental reports in New South Wales (NSW) and found more than 90% of teaching positions across the state—around 50,000 full-time roles—are located in Local Government Areas (LGAs) where housing is unaffordable on a teacher's salary.
The situation is particularly dire for new teachers. There are 675 schools—nearly 23,000 full-time teaching positions—where the median rent for a one-bedroom place is unaffordable on a graduate teacher's salary.
Housing is considered unaffordable if a person spends more than 30% of their income on housing costs—sometimes called being in housing stress. Those in housing stress may not have enough money remaining to cover the cost of food, clothing, and other essentials.
But affordability isn't just an issue for early career teachers. For experienced educators at the top of the pay scale, 70 schools—about 2,000 full-time roles—are in an LGA where a single-bedroom dwelling is also unaffordable.
"The study shows the last time a first-year teacher salary could comfortably afford the rent for a one-bedroom dwelling was around a decade ago," says Professor Scott Eacott, the author of the study and Deputy Director of the Gonski Institute for Education at UNSW Arts, Design & Architecture.
"Fundamentally, there's been an increasing gap between salary and the costs of housing that the standard pay rise isn't covering, and it's pushing teachers further away from their workplaces or out of the profession entirely.
"The issue is not just limited to teachers, but all essential workers who are increasingly finding it difficult to find affordable places to live within a reasonable distance of their
"The school system is struggling to find enough teachers as it is," Prof. Eacott says. "If teachers can't afford to live near or within reasonable commuting distance of their schools, we can only expect those shortfalls to continue to grow."
[...] Prof. Eacott says part of the challenge is that no single government department or the private sector is ultimately responsible for housing essential workers. While more investment from superannuation funds in essential worker housing developments is welcome, it won't be enough to address the issue at scale.
"The simple answer is we do need to be paying teachers more. But that may not necessarily solve supply problems," Prof. Eacott says. "For example, it is just incredibly difficult right now for teachers to find a place to rent given record low vacancy rates.
"It's also important that we're not confining teachers to just teacher apartments, but creating pathways to home ownership."
[...] "We rely so much on our teachers, so it's only fair we take steps towards providing them and other essential workers with affordable and secure housing options," Prof. Eacott says.
Journal Reference:
Eacott, Scott. The systemic implications of housing affordability for the teacher shortage: the case of New South Wales, Australia [open], The Australian Educational Researcher (DOI: 10.1007/s13384-023-00621-z)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by looorg on Sunday May 21 2023, @11:58AM (15 children)
Also true beyond the island downunder for teacher, nurses, daycare workers and all kind of low-paid municipality workers. Then add in all the store staff etc. All the work that society today needs and wants to work but nobody wants to actually pay for. Yet somehow can't really live with out. Everyone can't be a superproductive high pay worker. Someone needs to serve them with services and such -- somehow SUDO MAKE SANDWICH just doesn't produce enough sandwiches. It's odd when they bring up the idea of social housing or company towns or buildings again just so they can get staff into the area without them having to sit on a bus, tube, train or whatnot for hours just to get into the heart of the city.
In some regard the working class can't afford to live where they actually work. The commute is getting longer and longer for them. Which makes me wonder why they bother if they had any choice about it. Most of them probably doesn't. Or should really benefit in moving away from the big cities. Leave the "elite" to service themselves. A teacher out in the boonies is probably better of then an urban teach is in so many ways.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Sunday May 21 2023, @12:31PM (12 children)
A) How hard is it to acquire sandwich ingredients and assemble them? Kinda like making burnt bean coffee and pouring in a bunch of milk and some syrup... These services are actually super expensive luxuries that offer much more social/psychological value than actual meeting of any particular needs.
B) During the inflation spike of the 1970s my early boomer parents (both teachers) caved and accepted the dual income social contract. For a while dad also taught night courses and there in the 1970s with 2.5 teacher incomes we could afford the mortgage on a new 1670 square foot 3/2 in a subdivision, a new 6 cylinder 4 door BMW, two kids and a Persian cat. Their parents were WWII vets also working dual income their whole lives as teacher, mechanic, security guard (which paid real money then), and hairdresser with her own freestanding shop (paid for by a high paying year in Iraq by her husband.). By so busting ass, they lived a good life and gave their boomer kids a good life.
If you are fortunate enough to have two ass busting parents with enough money to kickstart you and a working teacher spouse with some down payment and occasional vehicle purchase or maintenance help, you can still bust ass as two teachers plus some side gig money and do a half assed job raising your own kids, probably divorcing due to the stress at some point, etc. I know dual teacher families today who managed to get lucky with a dip in the housing market, buy some new construction with a 40 minute commute each way to/from their assigned schools and mom is looking at a choice between Xanax or divorce which would lose the house because their parents aren't quite able to pitch in to a difficult situation the way my grandparents did.
Throw in some disability in either spouse or a high maintenance child or two and the whole thing comes crashing down. Our personal household works because my single income is about double the median household income in our region. My wife has been full time care giver to two children with severe Autism for 20 years now, and that should count as a part time side hustle for me as well, unpaid of course.
It's no mystery why "economically advanced" nations' birth rates fall below replacement rates. The so-called wealth keeps most rats in the race too busy to want children.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by looorg on Sunday May 21 2023, @02:20PM (11 children)
It's not that they are hard or easy that makes them cheap. Making or preparing food is both hard and easy. As noted burning some toast vs growing crops that makes bread etc are two different things. But the people that are "in power" or have the high paying jobs would be a lot less productive without all these super luxury services if they also had to do all the menial tasks of every day living and couldn't just pay someone else to do them for them. In some regard it's the backbone of pyramid of society, not everyone can be on top. Someone have to service the once higher up with good and services for them to be able to do what they do. The problem these days is that it hardly seems worth doing these services or the cost of living is going up faster then their income so making a living on it is harder and harder. I guess the overlords are hoping for the AI-robot-revolution to cut all these people out of the equation (or shuffle them elsewhere). Then there will be trouble ... If history teaches us anything it is that then there will be violence.
While they might be to busy for babies it might be a need, urge or want that they are suppressing due to their financial situation. They just can't afford to have children. If you can barely take care of yourself how are you supposed to take care of another very unproductive offspring for 20ish years or so. That is assuming they don't have any special needs or requirements. That is becoming an equation that doesn't compute for a lot of these people. And no amount of welfare or social stipends are going to change that, or well it could but they are not yet large enough anywhere on the planet that I know off. Nobody is getting paid to be an at home baby-factory.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday May 21 2023, @03:48PM (8 children)
>the people that are "in power" or have the high paying jobs would be a lot less productive without all these super luxury services if they also had to do all the menial tasks of every day living and couldn't just pay someone else to do them for them.
Or so they would have you believe. At the point where the people "in power" have personal assistants to take care of these things for them, I agree, they are more productive because they have servants taking care of things they would otherwise do themselves. We use Instacart, that saves us time driving, shopping, and checking out groceries - it's a very good deal for us in time saved vs the added expense of delivery service (and IMO a very bad deal for the drivers, but nobody is forcing them to take the gig...)
On the other hand, middle class indulgence in "sudo make sandwich" or coffee or many other highly prolific service industries is usually far less efficient in both time and money than the DIY alternatives. Those restaurants, basic home maintenance services, etc. allow a sense of superiority, as if the middle class consumers are getting somebody else to do something for them, but in reality they could have done something similar, or even better, for themselves for not only less money, but also less time in travel, queuing, and/or management of the service providers. It often takes less time to Google how to fix a home appliance and less money to buy the required parts and tools than getting a "professional" to come do it for you. Our somfy shade motor went wonky (first time in 5 years) last time it was under warranty and it took more (calling, scheduling, waiting for the appointed visit) time to have the installer to come "fix it" than this go around and just look up how to reset it ourselves. Years back, as a service provider, a client paid me to drive 90 minutes through traffic to show them how to unmute their PC audio output...
>for babies it might be a need, urge or want that they are...
Indulging without critical thought, so the children of economically "advanced" societies are being parented more and more by people with impulse control / long term critical analysis deficiencies...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Sunday May 21 2023, @04:25PM (7 children)
I would say it's not so much the baristas and sandwich makers that are critical, but police, fire, and sanitation are. That shiny impressive headquarters won't be so impressive covered in graffiti with piles of garbage around it, particularly if it's on fire. The executive washroom isn't such a perk if the toilets are all stopped up.
OTOH, the taxes the Coffee and Sandwich shops pay seem to matter to the cities they are in, and no baristas and sandwich makers means no shops and so no tax money. All those closed businesses turn a block into an open air drug den and rat farm. Also not a good look for the shiny office tower.
We might solve a lot of problems if we finally drive a stake through the heart of work in the office. The real Estate people won't like it, but since they're the ones pricing people out of living I don't really care how they feel about it. They can sell their gold toilet seats and sit on resin like the rest of us :-)
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday May 21 2023, @05:12PM (6 children)
>I would say it's not so much the baristas and sandwich makers that are critical, but police, fire, and sanitation are.
I would agree, but in our political environment, the baristas and sandwich makers are feeding profits up the corporate chain, so they get forever promoted, enhanced, and improved in their wealth-redirection capabilities to take from their customers and send to their owners. There are some taxes skimmed from the process, but - like the lottery - I'd rather pay taxes directly for services than get some kind of low value entertainment with a layer of tax on top. At least the state lottery has a fat 50% tax burden, underpaid baristas and sandwich chefs are skating at the edge of poverty, potential part-time recipients of welfare that may actually consume as much tax revenue in supported housing, food and medical assistance as their part-time owners pay in taxes on their labors and profits derived therefrom. WalMart is the shining star example of how to get welfare to pay your employees so you don't have to.
Police, fire, sanitation, and perhaps most critical of all in the long term: education, are, instead, paid begrudgingly out of taxes, and therefore they get forever squeezed, reduced to the bare minimums, and in the words of our local school board member "they will not spend one dollar that they are not absolutely required to by law."
>We might solve a lot of problems if we finally drive a stake through the heart of work in the office.
Lots and lots of people won't like this one. To make it stick, we're going to have to change how our education system works, away from 13 years of direct oversight in the classroom training into some kind of more independent learning / work model. In my high school of 1200 pupils (counting all 4 years, graduating class size was around 210 - which if you can divide 990 by 3 should tell you something about the dropout rate...) In that population, there were a precious few "independent study" programs (maybe 30 students participating at any given time) that I feel served as a good work-from-home preparatory teaching style. I had Independent Study computer science one year, in which the regular comp-sci class was taught in one half of a divided room, and 5 or 6 independent study kids were in the other - laboratory - half of the room, so the teacher had basic safety/discipline oversight, but we did our own things with the computers - which the 1983 administration openly acknowledged was "because you kids know more about these things than any teacher we have, so you might as well teach yourselves something instead of causing trouble in the basic classroom."
People need to learn, most easily from an early age, how to be transparent about what they are doing, how to demonstrate value beyond "presenteeism," and a bunch of other stuff that a lot of our workforce is ill-equipped to teach themselves, and management even less well equipped to recognize / work with.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Sunday May 21 2023, @08:58PM (5 children)
It's a worst kept secret that U.S. public education was designed around conditioning students to work in a factory and teaching them enough to be useful but not enough to become 'difficult'.
It may have crept from that mission somewhat since then, but without changing the fundamental structure of it, it still has that character to it.
As a start, homework should be replaced with OPTIONAL exercises that students should do until they (and their parents) feel that they have learned the material. A test should provide feedback on the quality of their self assessment. Especially in primary grades, they should get a chance to try again if their assessment was wrong. In later years, they should gain greater independence. Essentially, school should teach HOW to learn and guide what needs to be learned as well as suggest other things that may be of interest.
There will be other adjustments elsewhere. Many places will have to get over the city as an office park mentality if they want to continue to exist. They'll alsy have to do something about the many buildings in permanent limbo where the rent is too high to ever allow profitable occupancy by a business but can't be lowered or the bank will foreclose. Some of those buildings are already past the point of no return due to over a decade of neglect and damage by rats, roaches, and junkies (their only occupants). Others may yet be rehabilitated. The music stopped years ago and now everyone involved is nervously shuffling around in a circle whistling and hoping nobody notices. The chair to butt ratio is probably less than 50% by now.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday May 21 2023, @09:36PM (2 children)
>school should teach HOW to learn
Shhhh!!!! The whole reason my single income is double the median household income is because the role inherently requires self teaching / independent learning / self management and there's precious little competition in the workforce with those skills.
>guide what needs to be learned
It seems to me that the core BS curriculum is intended to provide a common experience for BS holders to relate to each other through (and conversely: shut out those who are ignorant of the inside jokes.)
>The music stopped years ago...
Decades ago in Japan. Coupled with population decline they continue to have interesting developments in their real estate market, like $25K USD homes near Tokyo... Still, the Japanese quality of life doesn't seem to be declining.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday May 22 2023, @03:05AM (1 child)
WRT Japan, obviously in Japan the real estate bubble has been allowed to pop or at least deflate considerably. We face a real quality of life problem if the bubble isn't allowed to deflate here as well.
Honestly, if we yell stop whistling and find a seat, even the ones who end up on the floor are unlikely to need a food bank even if they take a large haircut. But forcing that might help a lot of people who do currently need a food bank or might soon.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday May 22 2023, @10:00AM
>might help a lot of people who do currently need a food bank or might soon.
Oh, you mean the lazy, stupid, or otherwise undeserving poor who deserve to suffer as an example to motivate the masses? /S
The truly stupid (and lazy) in the US are those who think they are making their own lives better by hurting their neighbors. That's how you make a 3rd world shit hole: wealth disparity. Even the rich in a bad place are nowhere near as successful as the middle class in a good place, and the goodness of a place is properly rated by the quality of life of all the people, not just the top 2%.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ChrisMaple on Monday May 22 2023, @03:56AM (1 child)
Whose fault is it that U.S. students can't name the 3 branches of government or the first President? It's not that they're not taught, it's that they're slackers, and their parents let them be slackers.
Most schools separate students by performance. Even those of average intelligence can be in the top group if they are ambitious. Those in the top performance groups read Shakespeare, those in the middle read Heller and other modern crap, those at the bottom drop out. Those in the top group are NOT conditioned to work in a factory, those at the bottom are good for little else; both groups are self-selected. (There are many exceptions, that's just the trend.)
It's rare - about 1 in 100 - that a student below the age of 18 is self-directed enough for homework to be optional. Most don't want to be in school and resent having to learn; optional homework means no work.
I'm sick of hearing that schools should teach how to learn. It's a cliché without meaning. How to learn is inherent in schooling: pay attention to the teacher, apply what you've heard or read when you do an assignment.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday May 22 2023, @06:34AM
Remedial or advanced doesn't matter, when the bell rings you are to move to the next work station. The advanced students may read an expurgated version of Shakespeare translated (sometimes poorly) to modern English, but the discussion still comes down to "and THEN what happened boys and girls?".
What you described isn't learning how to learn, it's learning how to be bored to tears while being spoon fed bare facts without context.
Being self-directed is probably rare because the kids didn't learn how to learn starting from the primary grades. Being spoon fed without context for 12 years is enough to make anyone resentful, especially people who actually somehow figured out self-directed learning and actually enjoy learning. Nobody enjoys having cardboard tasting soggy cereal shoved in their mouth repeatedly.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday May 21 2023, @03:52PM (1 child)
Thats the marketing for why they "have to" have massive uncontrolled immigration. Everyone ignores the obvious problem that wages are low because of that immigration, and the immigrants can't do the jobs anyway, generally.
(Score: 3, Touché) by sjames on Sunday May 21 2023, @04:39PM
If the immigrants can't do the jobs, how are they depressing wages?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by GloomMower on Sunday May 21 2023, @01:05PM (1 child)
> A teacher out in the boonies is probably better of then an urban teach is in so many ways.
I donno, a rural school I know is trying to hire a teacher for $27k/year. I made more as a student worker.
People underestimate cost of living in rural areas. I know it could depend, but rural counties often times even have laws you can only build a house if it comes with XX acres of land to try to keep the character of their county a "farming" one. Often hard to find anything under $400k, and you got the extra costs of having to drive to a city to buy goods you need.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Sunday May 21 2023, @09:14PM
Rural gentrification. Great. And by "great" of course I mean not great.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday May 21 2023, @03:49PM
Doing arithmetic is a revolutionary act in an innumerate culture... 23K teachers across 675 schools is abt 35 teachers per school. I would guess most schools are elementary, similar to where I live. I went to the largest elementary school in my district and it only had 24 or so teachers, IIRC two floors two wings six classrooms per wing. Now this was a pretty big elementary school with around 3 classes per grade. The remainder of teachers were specials, the music room, the art room, the gym teachers, library, etc.
Possibly there's some effect similar to our giant middle and high schools in the USA.
Possibly they are adding "teachers aids" in as "teachers". The point of my math problem above is there's an underclass system in K12 education at least in my state where the teacher hauls in a pretty large salary, but the teachers aides are mostly new grads earning less than fast food wages. I wonder if we're seeing something like this effect behind the propaganda.
Another interesting effect is the wages are very low in my state now. When I was a kid, teaching was a life long profession and you'd often have grandparent aged teachers retiring from the classroom. Now the average teacher age is in the 20s, burn em out and replace them. So offering $125K for a teacher with 40 yrs experience doesn't matter if 90% of the teachers at your kids middle school are only in their 20s.
People keep signing up for K12 ed degrees because there's now more behind the scenes admins (highly paid admins...) than classroom teachers. You're "not supposed" to make middle age or late career pay in a classroom, behind every classroom teacher there's now more than one employee with a title like department chair, diversity officer, curriculum advisor, asst principal, principal, etc. So classroom teachers are "supposed to" only get a first job pittance of a salary on their way to the district office once they're 30 or so. If you're in the K12 racket you're supposed to escape the classroom by 30 or take up an entirely new field, go into real estate, get a second degree such as the Mrs. degree, etc.
Its kind of like being in the Army. Back in 1900, 1915, 1923, most people "in the army" were front line-ish infantry. Now a days most are not. Tooth to tail ratio and all that.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by krishnoid on Sunday May 21 2023, @04:12PM (7 children)
Like how resident assistants live in dormitories (in a larger room) on-campus? They could move out when their salaries went up, and they'd at least be able to save up in the meantime. Plus the commute wouldn't suck, and they could have more flexibility for extracurricular activities.
Don't most kids think teachers live at the school anyway?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by sjames on Sunday May 21 2023, @04:47PM (5 children)
Possibly, but read up on the history of company towns and company stores before leaping. A big problem with company housing is that when (not if these days) you get laid off you become unemployed and homeless at the same time at the stroke of a pen. That also makes it nearly impossible to demand better work conditions or pay.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Sunday May 21 2023, @05:52PM
Which brings up a good point, about teachers' unions being able to negotiate enough area-dependent pay to cover housing, or the housing itself.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday May 21 2023, @09:45PM (3 children)
>when (not if these days) you get laid off you become unemployed and homeless at the same time
With the paycheck to paycheck model that so many people follow for their personal finances, this is still true.
Also, if we are converting school buildings to low income housing, we might also guarantee a year's residence beyond any employment termination.
One of the greatest things about UBI is the U: Universal, aka reliable, dependable, non-revokable, something that all people could make plans around.
Guaranteed housing availability, even only for 52 weeks after termination, would provide the terminated employees with enough time to make a good next move, instead of a desperate one.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday May 21 2023, @09:58PM (2 children)
Even paycheck to paycheck offers a limited time since foreclosure or eviction cannot happen overnight.
I agree, a mandatory 52 week grace period after termination would make a large difference.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday May 21 2023, @10:59PM (1 child)
My dad works for a university that offers professors free on campus housing. He never accepted it because he didn't want the additional availability to his students and colleagues that would come with the "free" housing.
At this stage in his career, he has moved 500 miles from campus and does such remote teaching as they offer him, not a full salary, but as much as he wants.
Earlier career teachers could conceivably save a great deal of money having no housing or transportation costs by living on campus. I'm picturing a field of tiny houses behind the portable classrooms...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2023, @11:55AM
> a field of tiny houses
Yeah, I can see that too, but in any climate where heating and/or cooling is required, this is a dumb idea. Small buildings have a large ratio of surface-area:volume and are very expensive to heat/cool...compared to an apartment building or dorm where the units (flats) share walls.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 21 2023, @07:59PM
Not quite the same as actually living in the school building, but consider the urban planning in Toronto (Canada).
Not sure if it's still this way, but when I (from USA) was there for a week c.1995 I asked if there were any parts of town to be avoided (high crime, etc). The answer was that, by planning, every district of the city had to have a certain amount of low income housing (possibly subsidized or rent-controlled, I've forgotten). So by design there were no slums, no low income concentration anywhere.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by anotherblackhat on Sunday May 21 2023, @06:33PM (2 children)
Housing prices doubled over the last 10 years.
As long as governments view falling house prices as a bad thing, there's no good way to correct that.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday May 21 2023, @09:47PM
Higher values mean higher tax income. More money is more power, what person enters politics seeking less power?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by legont on Sunday May 21 2023, @11:59PM
Australia is a commodity appendix to China. It did not have a recession since 1991 or so.
They have a generation grown that think they are invisible. Well, it's gonna change. Soon. Hard.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by jb on Monday May 22 2023, @07:34AM
Australia is a lot more than just New South Wales ... and Sydney (the capital of NSW) just happens to be Australia's most expensive city.
I suspect that if done across Australia as a whole the number in the headline would still be ridiculously high, but not as high as "90%".