The future of work in schools.

Preparing for the future of work in independent schools.

The future of work in Australian schools is shaped by increasingly rapid change, requiring an agile and proactive approach from leaders and staff alike.

S.05

When asked what they’d like to see changed in the future of work in schools, participants’ most frequently-cited theme was more autonomy and flexibility. This encompassed more access to flexible work arrangements, a more flexible approach to delivering teaching and learning at the school and greater say over how work is done.

Chart 19: “When you think about the future of work in schools, what would you like to see changed?”– top recurring themes overall.

Preparing for the future of work is far from a one-size-fits-all exercise, however. Comparing responses by participant role type revealed a diverse mix of priorities, as shown in Chart 20—the change staff want to see depends on the nature of the work they’re currently doing. Consistent with earlier findings (see Section 4), calls for more autonomy and flexibility were most prominent among leaders and other support roles, though this was a top theme among all four role types.

Chart 20: “When you think about the future of work in schools, what would you like to see changed?” – top recurring themes by role type.

Application of AI tools.

An emerging stream of research is specifically exploring the use of AI tools to reduce workload in schools. While the long-term outcomes of using these tools have yet to be established, several studies show promising applications when the tools are used in a balanced way (e.g. Hashem et al., 2024). In the competitive landscape of Australian education, adopting AI solutions can be a key differentiator.

We asked participants to select from a list of examples a) the ways in which they were currently using AI tools to help with their workload, and b) the ways they envisaged using AI tools to help with workload in the future. Chart 21 presents the findings to both questions side-by-side.

Comparing current practice (red bars) to potential future practice (blue bars), we note that while 15% of staff indicated that they do not currently use any AI tools, only 3% indicated that they didn’t intend to use these tools in the future. Staff anticipated the greatest uplift in the use of AI for the purposes of: streamlining marking (from 2% currently to 9% anticipated in the future); automating administrative work (from 7% to 12%); and scheduling work (from 2% to 6%).

Chart 21: “In what ways are you currently using AI to reduce your workload?” (red) vs “In what ways could you see AI helping to reduce your workload in future?” (blue)

Key takeaways.

Results in this section confirmed key themes which emerged earlier in this report. When thinking about the changes they’d most like to see in future of work in independent schools, participants in our survey prioritised:

Better management of workload, with a specific focus on reducing or streamlining administrative work in particular.

Greater flexibility, both with regard to the availability of flexible work options, and more flexible approaches to how teaching and learning and school operations generally are managed.

Better use of AI tools in the right areas. Almost all survey respondents identified at least one area where they could use AI tools to support with managing their workload in future. Participants identified scope for AI tools to provide more assistance than they currently do in the automation of administrative tasks; the streamlining of marking; and scheduling work.

S4: Retention

S6: Conclusions