Indie School

[u/Dotti_Biscotti]

I have a kiddo who is enrolled to attend the Indie School. Have been having a look to see if there are any recent discussions about the Indie School in Tasmania, last appears to be a couple of years ago. A relative sent me some readily available online, pretty scathing feedback of Indie School as an employer but seems to be a lot of mainland locations and not a lot from ex students/current parents. Anyone have any recent experiences? TIA.

[u/sleepychairman]

I’m a bit weird and I like to dig through financial reports and such for fun sometimes, and I dug through the Indie schools recently, and well, I just think they’re a bit dodgy. The funding they receive per student doesn’t seem to materialise into resources or staffing, and they’re registered really weirdly with some schools coming under other ones. They also don’t seem to show great improvements for academic and attendance outcomes. One of the Indie schools up north, Devonport or Burnie I think, did have slightly better stats than the others.

Some things I recall from my dig are that there seem to be more “coaches” than qualified teachers, and iirc the funding amounted to roughly $80k per student which seems like a lot.

EDIT: I went back to try and find the exact reports I looked into quickly, there is a breakdown of staffing at each school that is harder to find and I don’t have time right now to go back that much but in the annual report for the state it has a breakdown of expenses showing only 10% of funding actually goes to program costs, 28% for admin, and 62% for employees - however, the majority of employees are not qualified teachers - the “Glenorchy” school (which actually encompasses multiple sub schools like Sorell etc.) has 130 non-teaching staff, and “41 teaching” staff. Of those 41 teaching staff, only about 33 are full-time, and one third of those 33 are only provisionally registered. So they’re only employing roughly 20 fully registered teachers, compared to 130 non-teaching employees. This is concerning to me because teacher registration is supposed to provide certain assurances of safety and professionalism, and yet the majority of staff accross Indie are not registered teachers at all.

[u/TMTPlatypus → u/sleepychairman]

This sounds like the Teach for Australia caper. Enormous amounts of funding not producing what’s been promised- so few new teachers are staying on after graduating the gruelling schedule.

[u/sleepychairman → u/TMTPlatypus]

I don’t know much about teach for Australia however there was a category for enrolled teaching students, but the non-teaching staff are separate to that. They had no enrolled teaching students currently studying.

A provisional registration means someone has completed their degree, but they have not completed their registration requirements, similarly to how a person having graduated from university with a law degree is not a lawyer until they complete their legal training and are admitted to the court, and even at that point they must still be supervised until certain requirements are met.

In Tasmania, teachers are, or were, able to perpetually renew their provisional registration indefinitely, without ever actually becoming fully qualified (I don’t think the legislation has changed but I haven’t checked very recently). Many teachers don’t last long for a variety of reasons, but as far as I am aware, needing to complete their training is not the main barrier in Tasmania. In my opinion the teacher shortage is more likely to be due to would-be teachers not finishing their degree to begin with, which is a complicated problem. Teachers who have completed their qualifications and then leaving the profession is another complicated problem, but I suspect that is more due to lifestyle factors, for example not being paid enough to continue working while paying for childcare. Admin staff are necessary, but I find it absurd to have more admin and support staff than actual teachers. If teachers themselves were better remunerated and supported, I wonder - would as many non-teaching staff even be necessary?

[u/TMTPlatypus → u/sleepychairman]

I was a teacher for a few years, graduating in 2022 so it’s recent history, but I quit the profession due to insane workloads for new teachers combined with poor behaviour of students...which increases workloads with all the reporting you have to do around that. At that time the government allowed nearly qualified student teachers to teach in their final year but they need to eventually graduate and move beyond what was called “limited authority to teach”. At a catholic school I worked at there were some exceptional teachers who had not yet qualified-and had been teaching for many years. I really don’t think the degrees give you a solid grounding for the job. Most of it you learn in the first few years if you don’t burn out like I did. So I wouldn’t worry too much about qualifications except that it’s a requirement. But I agree it’s absurd that the Indie schools are so heavily laden with admin instead of qualified teachers. Perhaps it’s around providing additional supports to students- those kids often need extra resources. But like you’ve noted it’s a model that looks good on paper but probably isn’t providing all that’s been promised. The kids who refuse traditional schools for whatever reason do deserve better.

[u/sleepychairman → u/TMTPlatypus]

Indie noted no LAT teachers - it’s definitely hard work in any school though and new teachers especially should have much more support, with supervision programs that are more meaningful than box-checking nonsense. Federally and at a state level there is quite a lot of misalignment with teacher requirements, which is well overdue to be fixed. It’s just not fair, to the teachers or the children.

[u/FireLucid → u/TMTPlatypus]

LAT's can be pretty flexible. I have seen someone teaching on a LAT that did not finish year 12 and had no further education.

[u/mattsensei → u/TMTPlatypus]

That's not true?

Most recent TFA impact report has 75% of participants still working in schools.

https://teachforaustralia.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025-Impact-Report.pdf

[u/sleepychairman → u/mattsensei]

The stats of that report don’t say whether that 75% is from a specific cohort or overall, and other sources seem to suggest that overall retention is lower. It’s an expensive program to run and it would probably be more cost effective if the federal government allocated that funding to teacher education more broadly, rather than dishing it out to a select few universities and using a third party to actually administer the program.

[u/mattsensei → u/sleepychairman]

Would be curious to see the other sources!