On the 1st of May, 2020, the Department for Education (DfE) made the decision to endorse the private company, and relief teacher booking system, ​Relief Ruler. Teachers, especially TRTs, were never consulted, nor our welfare and needs taken into account when the decision was made. This decision showed no transparency, and has disrespected the professionalism of our casual educators who have been petitioning for the last few years over critical, ongoing issues associated with the rampant, unregulated use of ​Relief Ruler ​in South Australian schools.

In a recent survey conducted in May 2020, with ​308 ​employees of the DfE, from the recent data, three results are exceptionally clear.

1. 80.5%​ of Teachers surveyed currently don’t feel that the DfE considers the welfare and professionalism of Relief Teachers in their decision making. This relates directly to the most recent decision to endorse ​Relief Ruler ​ .

2. 68.2%​ ​of Teachers surveyed feel that their mental health has been impacted negatively due to the new difficulty of securing work through apps like Relief Ruler. While​ ​21.8% said maybe.

3. 77.3% ​of Teachers surveyed stated that they prefered a direct text message or phone call from the Daily Operations Manager. While only ​1.9%​ ​showed preference for a mass notification sent to multiple people at once, the first to click accepts ecures the job for the day. This is the most common method used with ​Relief Ruler.

From this data it is apparent that the casual education sector employees have lost faith in the Department for Education to act in their best interests, or to consult them on decisions which affect the mental wellbeing and the financial situations of their own employees. A preference for a ‘quick fix’, uber-esque booking system which reduces casual education employees to a faceless mass invitation, and is an insult to a profession which relies on building strong relationships. These are the words of our educators, the teachers of our children, who have been silenced and disrespected. In case you have never heard of ​Relief Ruler  it is a mass invite, ‘fastest finger’ based booking system, much like ​Uber. ​ It removes all professional self-esteem and power from educated professionals to market themselves and build relationships with schools. I have included qualitative data from casual DfE employees below. These findings have been summarised in five main points from the survey conducted on the 9th of May 2020.

1. The endorsement, and use of ​Relief Ruler ​by the DfE shows blatant disregard for relationships, and existing relationships between teachers and students and schools. There is a disconnect between a profession which revolves around relationships, and a booking method which revolves around the ‘fastest finger’.

2. The use of ​Relief Ruler  impacts relationship building, and in turn, student achievement through the constant churn of casual staff. This would not be as high with existing personal booking methods, such as schemes and direct bookings, which rely on the use of regular staff, as part of a ‘team’, a community.

3. Relief Ruler ​causes high levels of anxiety in Relief Teachers, and it is negatively impacting their mental health, wellbeing and relationships with their family. This focuses on sleep deprivation due to receiving messages between such hours of 1-5 am, the need to constantly be attached to their phone while teaching, or with their family, and the mental repercussions of consistently failing to secure ‘jobs’.

4. There are significant functionality issues with ​Relief Ruler ​experienced by Relief Teachers. This relates to the unreliable nature of the app, frequent outages, delays, logouts, glitches and job cancellations/double bookings. One of the most alarming findings is that users have experienced a significant uneven playing field when it comes to jobs being ‘released’, with some users receiving the same booking 5-10 minutes later. This booking method is also ageist and discriminatory against users above the age of 50, and those who do not have 4G devices.

5. Other professionals, such as nurses, lawyers, dentists, doctors are not reduced to finding work via a ‘hire all’ uber-esque booking app, why are our educators? It’s no wonder that casual teachers are experiencing negative mental health as a result of this. Our teachers surveyed have 5+ year degrees, Master degrees, 20+ years of teaching experience, all unacknowledged and reduced to a mass job invite.

Furthermore, the contract between the DfE and ​Relief Ruler ​is not visible within the SA Tenders and Contracts public records for the Department for Education, with no contracts relating to the company ​Relief Ruler ​ or the software system. In conjunction with this, ​Relief Ruler is a ‘Silver Sponsor’ of the South Australian Primary Principal Association Inc, where over 60% of its board members and principals are users of​ Relief Ruler ​and have regular opportunities to socialise and meet with other SA Department for Education staff. Despite the rather obvious examples of the lack of transparency evident in the examination presented thus far, we should focus on the entire organisational method of our schools for booking and managing Relief Teachers and SSOs.

The ​Delivering Digital 2016-2020 digital technology strategy ​and the most recent EMS documents have priorities targeted at stakeholder groups, students, parents/carers, principals, directors, office management staff and of course, teachers and SSOs. While these documents acknowledges both teachers and SSOs as stakeholders, it makes no mention of our temporary staff, relief teachers. We have quite simply been left behind in this digital technology movement. We have become numbers, and not professional educators, in an education system which does not value us enough to provide us with a transparent and efficient state-wide system to secure casual employment. Instead they have effectively backed a private stakeholder, and a system which was not built for Relief Teachers. Relief Ruler  is fundamentally unreliable, impersonal, an outright insult to our profession and on a managerial system level, simply inefficient. This directly opposes the goals presented within the ​Digital Technology Strategy.

In conclusion, we must not continue to turn a blind eye to the detrimental mental health effects experienced by Relief Teachers, caused by the very private stakeholders the DfE are advocating for. Instead of telling teachers what they want, it is time that the DfE asked the teachers, listened to their ideas, and not the advice of a marketing director who has never stepped foot in a classroom as a relief teacher. Let your employees have a voice, involve them and listen to them. The DfE states that ​“ ​EMS is more than just new technology. It is a new way of thinking about how we support, transform, and modernise the way we work - as one team, statewide. ’’ (Schoolssaedu.sharepoint.com, 2020). At this moment, we can see no evidence that there are any ‘new ways of thinking’, just another system which has reduced the professionalism and education of its employees to a quick fix, a click, a mass invite. An ‘Add to cart’. An Uber-esque quick fix which has its roots firmly in reducing the professionalism of the teacher, and not equipping them with the self-esteem, appreciation, and professional booking platform they actually need and desperately want.

If the Department for Education was truly concerned about transforming and modernising their approach, they would discuss this with those, who are, at this moment, teaching, transforming and modernising the next generation through relationships. Three hundred and eight DfE staff currently working in schools, responded to our survey in only 4 days on the issue of how to improve the process of booking Relief Teachers in SA, imagine if our education department did the same.

Support Relief Teachers in SA by signing this petition. We don't want Relief Ruler, we want real change.