THE Department of Education has hit back at the NSW Teachers Federation, labelling the federation's statement about their Thursday meeting at Merewether High School as "inaccurate and intentionally misleading".
Federation deputy president Henry Rajendra said on Thursday staff had "walked out" over the state government inadequately staffing schools.
He said Merewether High was having difficulty securing casuals to cover colleagues on leave and staff were concerned about workloads and "the shortage of school counsellors which is impacting on the level of care and support students at Merewether High require".
A department spokesperson said this was not correct.
"The federation have an impending award negotiation - it is understandable for their members to agitate in the lead up," the spokesperson said.
"MHS staff did not raise any concerns about attracting casuals nor about any disruption to teaching and learning. The school continues to have casuals available as required.
"Staff did not raise any concerns about the school counsellor allocation at the school, as the school's 1.0 full-time equivalent counsellor position is filled.
"There was no stopwork action - 25 staff took 10 minutes to have a photograph taken just outside the school at a time when no classes were timetabled.
"Students were supervised while the photograph was taken."
The spokesperson said the school has 71 full-time teachers and four vacancies, "which the principal is actively recruiting for".
"We are recruiting for less than 1.5 per cent of the workforce across the state," the spokesperson said.
"We work closely with all schools, including MHS, on vacancies.
"So far this year we have filled almost 3200 teaching positions and hired almost 10,000 teachers since 2017."
The budget included 2.5 per cent annual pay rises for public servants.
Federation Hunter organiser Jack Galvin Waight said the department's response was "pathetic", "inadequate" and a "futile attempt ... to cause a distraction from the staffing crisis".
The federation is calling for an improvement in wages and workload.
"Members did take industrial action," he said.
"For the department to focus on this issue and not the learning conditions of our students and teachers is a disgrace.
"This is not just about one school or one local area, this is about the over 2200 schools across the state."
He said more than 650 schools had vacant permanent teaching positions and government data showed 1148 vacant teaching positions in May from Merewether to Broken Hill.
