Australia: Australian teachers turn to alcohol to cope with the stress of the job
Naughty students and “pushy” parents are forcing Australian teachers to develop alarming habits in a desperate bid to ease the pressure.
By Rhian Deutrom
June 7, 2019
Aussie teachers are being driven to drink after a Queensland study found their jobs are more stressful than ever before.
The study, conducted by Bond University, found that alcoholism and anxiety among teachers are three times higher than the population’s average.
It found that increasing workloads, demanding parents and workplace politics and stress are major triggers for teacher depression and anxiety.
The report found that 18 per cent of teachers who participated in the study were depressed and 17 per cent have “probable alcohol dependence’’.
The study’s author, Associate Professor Peta Stapleton, told The Courier-Mail that teachers on average are currently suffering from a mental health epidemic.
“The study shows teachers are using substances to cope and to relax and unwind, and that’s a worry,” Prof Stapleton said.
“Teachers (in the study) were meeting depression and anxiety symptoms triple the national average.’’
Prof Stapleton said teachers who are “cranky or withdrawing from drinking the night before” will have their teaching abilities adversely impacted, which will leave students worse off.
Queensland Teachers’ Union president Kevin Bates said most teachers work up to 55 hours a week, shepherding extra-curricular activities for students, marking homework and assignments, or writing lesson plans.
He said that classroom conflict and bad behaviour is also a major contributor to teacher’s rising depression and anxiety rates.
“The incidence of students verbally and physically assaulting teachers and other staffers is on the rise,” Mr Bates added.
“It goes from wilful disobedience, with students refusing to work, to annoying other students, right through to assaulting other students.”
He also attributed a lot of teachers’ anxiety to pushy parents whose respect for teachers was rapidly declining.
“That’s manifested in complaints directed at schools in ways that put the students’ view of the world first,” Mr Bates said.
“Parents will defend their children at all costs, despite evidence they’re in the wrong.
“Parents won’t accept their children have done the wrong thing.’’
In a statement earlier this year, the Australian Education Union warned that excessive out-of-hours work were a “key cause of low morale among public school teachers in Australia”.
“Nearly 92 per cent of teachers expressed concern that they do not have enough time outside of classes for lesson planning, marking, report writing and administrative tasks,” the statement said.
An AEU survey of more than 3500 teachers found that nearly half of the 478 principals surveyed said that “they worked for 56 hours or more per week”.
AEU Federal President Correna Haythorpe said excessive teacher workloads were forcing teachers to leave the industry.
“The workload burden on teachers in Australia is immense,” Ms Haythorpe said.
“In an AEU Victoria workload study, 90 per cent of teachers indicated that their workload at some stage has had a negative effect on their teaching.
“Most alarmingly, the same study revealed that more than a third of teachers in all schools have indicated that their workload often or nearly always adversely affected their health.”