Occupational Violence and Aggression
Thursday, 14 August 2025
One thing that has dominated the reporting and the government has been prepared to talk about is the rates of occupational violence and aggression (OVA). The government could easily take punitive actions against students in the name of “safety”, and sell this as “listening to teachers”.
I didn’t become a teacher to send working class kids to jail. The way to combat OVA in schools is to fully fund schools now (not in 10 years) so we can have more qualified support workers, and smaller class sizes. This would also improve teaching conditions. QLD teachers need a deal that improves our working conditions by giving us more non-contact time, more student free days and reducing our workload, as well as giving us pay that matches other professions. We need more time not just to prepare quality lessons but also to report our health and safety incidents and seek support.
OVA is a serious and worsening problem. But we have to be careful not to play into the reactionary law-and-order agenda of Crisafulli. Queensland already locks kids as young as 10 in adult watch houses under disgraceful laws that breach UN conventions for human rights and against torture, introduced by the previous Palaszczuk Labor government. This hasn’t made us safer as a community, nor stopped violence in school, and it won’t. Instead of pouring more resources into prisons for younger and younger people, the government should be pouring in the resources to engage those who are falling through the ever-growing cracks in our society. We urgently need more qualified support staff like social workers, psychologists, Guidance Officers and behaviour support staff in schools. We also need more programs in schools to address rising misogyny and the influence of sexist influencers, like Andrew Tate, on our students.
Whilst there’s a genuine discussion to be had about how best to make our workplaces safer, Crisafulli will no doubt be tempted to announce punitive “law and order” measures as a cheap substitute for the funding, and the schools, that Queensland teachers, students and communities deserve. We shouldn’t take the bait.
Everyone should be walking taller after our strike (August 2025). We highlighted the conditions in our schools, and the need for a significant wage rise and concrete workload relief. While other union leaders have signed off on the government’s 8% wages offer on behalf of their members (and look to face significant opposition from their members), 50,000 of us have stopped work, saying 8% is not good enough, and our workload is not improving. We expect to see some serious improvements in our pay and working conditions, and as 96% of us have voted, expect to see more stoppages if we don’t!
Bec Barrigos, Qld Teachers Fightback
I didn’t become a teacher to send working class kids to jail. The way to combat OVA in schools is to fully fund schools now (not in 10 years) so we can have more qualified support workers, and smaller class sizes. This would also improve teaching conditions. QLD teachers need a deal that improves our working conditions by giving us more non-contact time, more student free days and reducing our workload, as well as giving us pay that matches other professions. We need more time not just to prepare quality lessons but also to report our health and safety incidents and seek support.
OVA is a serious and worsening problem. But we have to be careful not to play into the reactionary law-and-order agenda of Crisafulli. Queensland already locks kids as young as 10 in adult watch houses under disgraceful laws that breach UN conventions for human rights and against torture, introduced by the previous Palaszczuk Labor government. This hasn’t made us safer as a community, nor stopped violence in school, and it won’t. Instead of pouring more resources into prisons for younger and younger people, the government should be pouring in the resources to engage those who are falling through the ever-growing cracks in our society. We urgently need more qualified support staff like social workers, psychologists, Guidance Officers and behaviour support staff in schools. We also need more programs in schools to address rising misogyny and the influence of sexist influencers, like Andrew Tate, on our students.
Whilst there’s a genuine discussion to be had about how best to make our workplaces safer, Crisafulli will no doubt be tempted to announce punitive “law and order” measures as a cheap substitute for the funding, and the schools, that Queensland teachers, students and communities deserve. We shouldn’t take the bait.
Everyone should be walking taller after our strike (August 2025). We highlighted the conditions in our schools, and the need for a significant wage rise and concrete workload relief. While other union leaders have signed off on the government’s 8% wages offer on behalf of their members (and look to face significant opposition from their members), 50,000 of us have stopped work, saying 8% is not good enough, and our workload is not improving. We expect to see some serious improvements in our pay and working conditions, and as 96% of us have voted, expect to see more stoppages if we don’t!
Bec Barrigos, Qld Teachers Fightback