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On the teachers’ school bus, there are no rules – but there are strict protocols.
“The first protocol is you’ve got to be on time. The second protocol is you’ve got to be on time, and the third protocol is you’ve got to be on time,” says assistant principal and bus driver Dean Lockhart.
Teachers on the Wedderburn College school bus driven by assistant principal Dean Lockhart.Credit: Eddie Jim
A late bus means Wedderburn College is missing a quarter of its teaching staff. Luckily, it’s a rare occurrence.
Each school day, Lockhart drives up to 12 teachers from Bendigo to the P-12 campus in Wedderburn, an hour north-west.
It’s the best way to entice teachers to the small farming town, which has no childcare and no available housing.
Teachers on the Wedderburn College bus. Credit: Eddie Jim
As the teacher shortage forces more schools to access the finite bucket of Education Department financial incentives, rural schools are reaching for more creative methods to ensure they have sufficient staff.
Lockhart’s bus has been running for three years. The assistant principal, who also lives in Bendigo, said this week he had no doubt it was responsible for recruiting and retaining staff.
The bus is team building on wheels, sometimes a venue for impromptu meetings and lesson planning but more often a space for sharing Spotify playlists. Every Tuesday, one teacher hosts a trivia session. Lockhart drives every morning, but in the afternoon they mix it up.
There has only ever been one mishap, when a teacher backed into a pole. They still let him drive, but as Lockhart says, “he’s been the butt of many jokes”.
Wedderburn’s bus is one of several initiatives being run in the North Central schools cluster, which includes the shires of Loddon and Buloke, and the community of St Arnaud in the Northern Grampians Shire.
A submission on behalf of the cluster to the Parliamentary Inquiry into the State Education System in Victoria warns the divide between metropolitan and rural education has grown, raising concern about the future of educational opportunities in rural communities.
The submission said some rural schools felt financial incentives like the lucrative relocation bonus often created more problems than solutions.
Teachers can earn $50,000 over two years or $77,000 over five years with the bonus, but few stay beyond that.
Wedderburn College.
Wedderburn College principal Danny Forrest says he’s heard of some leaving after the first year and paying back $25,000.
“Rural life’s not for everyone,” he says.
Forrest says he would love to see retention payments instead, which he could use to encourage good staff to stay another year.
He would also like to see the return of more government-supplied teacher housing and mandatory rural postings for graduate teachers.
Sixty kilometres north-west in Wycheproof, the P-12 school works its timetables around the local childcare centre to accommodate teachers’ availability.
Principal Christine McKersie says job candidates are quite often asked if they play netball or football before their work history, to identify those more likely to put down roots.
“That’s what you’re looking for in a country town,” she says.
Rural teachers are also expected to be more resourceful and flexible than their city counterparts. Wycheproof staff might take a VCE subject and a prep class in the same week.
In the cluster’s inquiry submission, one principal was referred to as “poly-filler”, teaching geography, literacy and numeracy intervention, maths and supervising private study over five days.
“Schools and school leaders out this way have to think quite creatively,” McKersie says. “If they want opportunities for the kids, they have to think outside the box and say how can we make it happen with the resources we’ve got.”
In Wedderburn, it’s all about flipping the narrative to create advantage from the school’s high levels of disadvantaged students. Extra funding allows them to bring in a regular masseuse for teachers, and the school runs a full cafe on site.
Wedderburn, which once went through five principals in two years, is now growing. Next year, there will be enough year 7 students for two classes for the first time ever. Student numbers are up to 212 from 180, and the college employs 45 teachers, many of them part-time.
’If we didn’t have the bus and we didn’t have a positive staff culture, we’re in a bit of strife for recruitment,” Forrest says.
“We’ve got some ripper staff that just jump on the bus. It’s just a great bonding session for them.
That’s one of the things that’s appealing to them is to be able to be transported with their colleagues each day.”
Since 2019, the state government has invested more than $46 million in targeted financial incentives to recruit about 600 teachers to hard-to-staff roles, including 400 in rural and regional schools.
The Education Department also maintains a stock of more than 220 houses, which can be used by teachers taking up positions at some rural locations. These houses are provided at market rents.
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