A New South Wales inquiry into unpaid teaching staff has surfaced a compliance risk that reaches well beyond one school's boardroom, with implications for how HR and people leaders classify workers everywhere
A New South Wales parliamentary inquiry into Redeemer Baptist School has turned into a broader lesson for HR and people leaders on the risks of misclassifying staff as volunteers.
The Legislative Council's Education Committee, chaired by Greens MLC Abigail Boyd and established on 7 July 2026, heard evidence on 10 August 2026 that the North Parramatta school's entire teaching workforce had, for years, been engaged as unpaid volunteers rather than employees – despite receiving substantial public funding.
Carol Matthews, Secretary of the Independent Education Union of Australia (IEU) NSW/ACT Branch, told the committee she was unaware of any comparable case. "I'm not aware of any other school where core teaching duties are performed by volunteers," Matthews said.
For HR leaders in any sector, that single line captures why this case is worth watching closely: it is a live illustration of how a workforce classification decision, left untested for long enough, can escalate into a multi-regulator governance crisis.
Matthews told the inquiry that teaching staff and students had, at times, shared bedrooms, and that the school relied on unpaid labour from students and staff for tasks including building maintenance and gardening. She said the...
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