As anyone following our transition to Australia already knows, I was teaching on a fixed-term, one-term contract. There are two types of teaching contracts here - fixed term and ongoing. Fixed term contracts come up regularly. Maternity leaves are traditionally one year long. New mums get an entire year off, and get paid part or all of their salary during their time with the baby. Dads can also take parental leave - not sure how long they are allowed, but it's longer than pretty much anything offered regularly in America. This leaves a lot of temporary openings for replacement teachers, which can pop up mid-year, the beginning of the year, whenever.
Australian employers also offer long-service leaves. I don't know how long they are in the real world, but in the teaching world they are one term long. If you work at a school for 10 years, you earn a term off, paid. This is another way new teachers can get fixed-term contracts mid-year.
Australians are prolific travelers. Some just take a term off to travel. One of my office-mates is taking next term off to go to London, Paris, and Ireland. It's unpaid in his case, but employers are more understanding about allowing long travel plans to go ahead, just because it takes so long to get from Australia to just about anywhere. Again, more opportunities for replacement teachers to pick up short-term contracts.
I'm teaching in the private sector. To get a public school job, you fill out a common application online that's good for the entire state, and schools call you if they want to interview you. I put my common application in the system, but was never called. After talking to one of my office-mates, who was recently excessed from the public system, it's more clear why no one ever called me. After about 15 years of experience, Australian teachers are at the top of the pay scale. Public schools (called state schools here) have x dollars to spend on personnel. At times they find it expedient to lay off one more experienced teacher in favor of two less experienced teachers. Of course it's not universal that this happens, but knowing this makes it clearer why no state schools called me to interview - who wants a brand-new-to-Australia teacher who would need to be paid top dollar? Private schools charge $8 - 24 thousand per student per year, and they also get about $6,000 per year per kid from the government (or so it says on my kids' tuition statements) so they can afford to pay the higher salaries.
By the way, even public school isn't entirely free. Public schools charge about $500 per student per year, and they do a bit of fundraising in the form of fetes at their school, which are fairs with games and food booths etc.
Teacher pay in Australia is typically better in the private sector than the public by about 25%. What I'm earning at my school is approximately what I'd earn in Baltimore County, if you figure in the change in currency. It sounds much more impressive in Australian dollars, but has less buying power, of course.
Teacher work load is more generous in Australia. You generally get one period of prep time for every two periods you teach. My school has a six-period per day schedule, so I teach four and am off two. Plus schools have a tea break after the first two periods, and a 45 minute lunch after the second two periods. The breaks seem to be the same for public and private.
My one-term contract has now expired. The teacher I replaced is coming back, but another teacher is still out on medical leave. His replacement teacher was full-time, and they decided to split her job between her and me for second term. She's 0.6, I'm 0.5 (there was an extra class I was covering that my teacher never teaches). Neither one of us is terribly happy about the arrangement, but she's probably more unhappy than me since the teacher she's replacing is still gone while mine has returned.
I think the school wants to keep us both around for future openings. One maths teacher is definitely retiring after this year, and after looking around the room at a maths department meeting I'm guessing a few more will follow soon. In my free time this coming term I'll be working on making my "provisional" license a "full" license, volunteering at before-school help classes, and taking a class on how to teach different VCE maths classes. If there's going to be a contest at the end of the year for the open position, I'd like to win it.
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