‘Culture of disrespect’: Australian teachers say students’ behaviour is driving them from profession

It took three weeks for Amanda, whose name has been changed to protect her identity, to resign as a casual relief teacher. Now in her 60s, Amanda has had teaching stints for decades, including time at remote communities in the Northern Territory.

She thought this year’s contract in Victoria would be a breeze. But she’d never experienced behaviour that was so poor.

Every lesson, a year 11 boy would repeatedly ask her if she was a “gooner” and was going to “goon” – a colloquial phrase for masturbation – when she got home.

During class, she found it impossible to get the attention of students, who would “refuse to shut their computers” and continued playing online games.

“I was shattered,” she says. “I just couldn’t go back. What I experienced was a culture of total disrespect.”

This week, the federal government opened submissions for a review into bullying at Australian schools, with the aim of developing a nationally consistent response.

According to the Australian Council for Educational Research (Acer), Australia’s disciplinary climate is significantly worse than the OECD average. Exposure to bullying is higher than all comparison countries, except Latvia.

The government’s review is focused on the experience of children, with evidence suggesting bullying is undermining student wellbeing, attendance, engagement and learning outcomes. But teachers say they’re not immune from the impacts of behavioural issues. And they need support.

Guardian Australia has spoken to more than a dozen teachers who have faced mental health issues or decided to exit the system due to the poor behaviour of students.

One teacher, who is on stress leave after 20 years in the sector, says they used to face three or four difficult young boys in class. It had since grown to almost half.

Another former teacher in north-west New South Wales recently medically retired due to repeat instances of bullying and violence by students and parents across multiple schools.

He says the schools would fail to respond to suspension guidelines and appropriate child-safety plans.

“I’d report violence, assault and drug use and nothing would happen,” he says.

The proportion of Australian teachers reporting they plan to leave the profession jumped from less than a quarter in 2020 (22.25%) to more than a third (34.21%) in 2022, data from the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) has found.

And the reasons are multifaceted. A Deakin University study into the turnover rates of teachers, published this year, found emotional demands and experiences of work-related violence were strongly associated with an intention to leave the profession.

Dr Mark Rahimi, a psychosocial researcher at Deakin University, says a shift towards more “teacher-centred” policies, that recognise the profession as “complex emotional and intellectual work” is needed.

“This means examining how the pressures and challenges teachers experience daily, the levels of respect and recognition they receive, and the support they are given in their work are shaped by policies and decisions at both the school and systemic level,” he says.

Workloads also play a factor. One teacher retired this year after experiencing “out of control” behaviour at a government school in Sydney when numbers exceeded capacity.

“We had teachers punched, pushed, spit on, name-called, intimidated,” he says. “A woman on canteen duty who was in a wheelchair was surrounded by 10 year-nine boys.

“We had no CCTV, so no evidence of what was happening on the playground each day.”

Another high school teacher with three decades of experience temporarily retired in 2020, “exhausted and disillusioned”. After the floods in northern New South Wales, she returned to work in 2023.

“I was verbally abused more times than I had experienced in all my previous teaching years,” she says, citing sexual harassment and physical intimidation, including being referred to as a “poxy [worthless] skank”.

“The pervading culture is misogynistic … what keeps me going is my belief that there are many kids who are also suffering … and that we teachers can and do make a difference.”

Other teachers still in the system are unable to speak out due to Department of Education employee guidelines, but say they are experiencing daily verbal abuse from students and, often, their parents.

They’ve pointed to a significant shift post-Covid lockdowns, with dropping attendance and a decline in respect for the profession, exacerbated by the continued underfunding of public schools.

“I have been punched, kicked, grabbed, slapped, pushed, head-butted and stabbed with a pencil all within the last 12 months,” one teacher says. “The system is very broken.”

Senior lecturer at Monash university’s school of education, Dr Fiona Longmuir, says the retention issue is “massive”, particularly for mid-career teachers who are the most likely to indicate a desire to leave the profession.

“We can keep recruiting until the cows come home, but if we’re not keeping teachers in the job and keeping them healthy and sustaining … we’re just pouring water into a leaking bucket,” she says.

Longmuir describes the problem as “death by 1,000 paper cuts”. Teachers are passionate about their job, but they’re demoralised, and their time and energy is increasingly being directed away from the bread and butter of teaching.

“They can’t switch off, particularly with the increasingly complex and demanding needs of young people who we know are struggling – probably more than they ever have before,” she says.

“They’re also seeing a lack of respect [towards teachers] in the public discourse. We’ve lost this sense of shared responsibility … as we’re seeing decreasing respect across the community.”

Longmuir says what teachers, and students, are “crying out for” is more sector-wide effort to foster care and connection in schools.

“We’ve had such pressure for schools to be good at achievement in certain narrow areas … and those pressures have increased over the years,” she says.

“We need to make more room for kids to have fun and connect and for teachers to be able to find joy in the work that they do.”

One teacher, who’s been in the profession for more than a decade and currently teaches at a private boys school, used to love his job. He has a file of thank you notes from students and parents. The issue, he says, is children are less eager to learn.

“Managing the behaviour of a vocal minority in every class takes up more and more time and – crucially – more and more of the teacher’s emotional energy,” he says.

“Their attention spans get shorter and shorter by the year, something most teachers anecdotally attribute to mobile phone use and ‘TikTok brain’.”

He says “rudeness, defiance and a lack of basic respect” – especially towards female teachers from boys – is persistent. He worries about the rise of the “manosphere”, popularised by figures like Andrew Tate.

“I have – more than once – been physically threatened by students to beat me up,” he says.

“I’m under the care of a psychologist as a result of the stress. I’ve been advised that the best course of action for my mental health is to retire but I can’t afford to.

“Teachers need far more support … We deal with dozens of students at a time and many of them have poor impulse control. We’re legally responsible for their safety. But who’s taking care of ours?”

[Source: The Guardian]