Schools and the city: workforce distribution, housing\nand city schools

Attracting and retaining a stable supply of effective teachers is critical to the provision\nof schooling that meets international commitments to equity, excellence, and\ninclusion. Initiatives targeting school staff are predicated on the accessibility of\nschools for the workforce. To this point, the empirical impact of housing and transportation\ncosts on the school education workforce has been relatively poorly understood.\nBased on a novel approach describing workforce distribution, our analysis of\nthe Greater Sydney statistical area in Australia found that not only is the city unaffordable\nfor the school education workforce, but unobserved characteristics (e.g.,\nintergenerational wealth, housing assets, high income housemates) fill the income\nto cost gap. De-centring the individual, we show that the sustainability of the Sydney\nschool education workforce is fragile and should it collapse, the consequences\nwould be sudden and acute.