According to Gabbie Stroud of Merimbula, the standardised national curriculum, testing and teacher assessments all take their toll on the journey of learning. 

While Ms Stroud was aware standardisation was occurring across many different sectors in the country –such as health and banks – she said there was an urgent need for change in education due to the impacts on children. 

“They are the ones suffering from this, they are the victims,” she said.  

“There is nothing standard about the journey of learning.” 

On October 7, Ms Stroud publicly announced on her Facebook page that she had resigned from her job as a teacher at St Patrick’s Primary School, Bega, in a post that has since received almost 4500 “likes” and 1500 shares.

“Teaching – good teaching – is both a science and an art. Yet in Australia today this incredible and important profession is being reduced to the sum of its parts. It is considered something purely technical and methodical that can be rationalised and weighed,” she said in her Facebook post. 

Speaking on Tuesday, Ms Stroud said she was feeling very good.

“I’m amazed and overwhelmed at the response the post has created,” she said.

“It really surprised me – I didn’t know my sentiments were felt by so many others.” 

Ms Stroud has worked in primary and secondary schools as a teacher for 15 years.

The changes she has seen in the last 10 years have been exponential. 

“Those changes have impacted directly on teachers and their workloads,” she said. 

Teachers now have to spend more time focusing on the bureaucracy around their job, time they could be using to look after their students, she said.  

Ms Stroud believes there is also too much testing of students, as she has even noticed children in Kindergarten becoming stressed around tests, and an unnecessary focus is placed on academic subjects rather than creative.

She said these academic subjects do not address resilience or social skills in children. 

Also, the National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) creates unnecessary worry in primary school pupils, she said. 

“You can see the uncertainty in their faces as they are not ready for tests,” Ms Stroud said.

“They know tests are important, but they don’t know why they are important.” 

In a perfect world, Ms Stroud said teachers would be given enough time to do their work they need to do and their professional judgement would be respected and valued.

Also, schools would have the resources they need, such as counselors, and NAPLAN would be stopped. 

Ms Stroud wanted to make it clear her resignation had nothing to do with St Patrick’s School, which she described as an excellent school.

“We are so fortunate as we have many excellent schools in our Valley,” she said.

“[My resignation] was about the broad system of education in Australia.” 

She now hopes to keep working on her writing, clean units and possibly start advocating for teachers. 

Gabbie Stroud has written an essay about why education needs to change that will be published in the Griffith Review in February 2016.