School-wide curriculum planning saves teachers time, Grattan Institute research shows

A Grattan Institute survey of 2243 teachers and school leaders found only 15 per cent of respondents had access to a common bank of lesson materials.

Teachers in disadvantaged schools were half as likely to have access to these materials for all of their subjects.

About one-in-three teachers reported they had no access to a comprehensive bank of curriculum materials for any of their subjects.

Half of teachers were responsible for planning their own lessons, which was especially the case for smaller schools where 71 per cent of teachers planned all of their lessons.

The typical full-time teacher spends six hours per week just on sourcing and creating curriculum material but one in four teachers are spending more than 10 hours on this task.

Teachers in schools where they had access to a bank of teaching materials spent three hours less on creating and sourcing materials.

Grattan Institute education program director Dr Jordana Hunter said their research showed teachers were stretched very thin and faced with "reinventing the wheel" by going it along on lesson planning.

"We did a big survey last year in 2021, and 92 per cent of teachers that we surveyed said they really struggle to prepare for effective teaching in the classroom, and a number of them raised challenges around lesson planning," Dr Hunter said.

"I think governments have really radically underestimated the amount of time and expertise that teachers need to implement the Australian Curriculum and those state level variants in the classroom to really bring those curricula to life in a way that supports student learning and it's definitely adding to the pressures on teachers."

The researchers spoke to Australian schools that had implemented a whole-school approach to curriculum planning.

Teachers reported having access to the materials gave them more time to think about supporting different students' needs.

The schools which had adopted this approach tended to have strong, clear leadership and curriculum leaders with deep expertise.

Grattan Institute analysis showed if a government developed system-wide materials for a particular subject from scratch, the cost would be $15 to $20 million.

School-based development was more than 100 times more expensive than system developed while individual teacher developed materials were more than 240 times more expensive.

Dr Hunter said beginning teachers would benefit greatly from a centralised approach but teachers of all experience levels were often teaching subjects or year levels for the first time and faced having to create materials from scratch.

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She said governments had a role to play to ensure every school had the opportunity to implement whole-school planning, regardless of their level of advantage.

"Every student in the country deserves that rich education that education ministers have promised to provide," she said.

"But we can't just leave it to teachers to shoulder that entire burden themselves. I think we really do need to be looking for ways to provide practical support and this is one of them."

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