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Australia’s teacher shortage has been building for years with the effects felt most sharply in the schools that can least afford it. We spoke with Leadership Development Program (LDP) Alumni and current Teach For Australia (TFA) state manager Amy Sharp about what the shortage looks like from the inside, as well as what could change it.
Key takeaways
Australia ranks among the top three OECD countries for teacher shortages in public schools, with shortages hitting hardest in disadvantaged communities.
The shortage is driven by both a shrinking pipeline of new teachers and the attrition of experienced ones, with workload and burnout consistently cited as the top reasons teachers leave.
Potential solutions include structured coaching, early career support, alternative entry pathways, and targeted investment in hard-to-staff schools. These all make a measurable difference.
There is a teacher shortage in Australia. According to the TALIS 2024 Australian Report, published by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER), 42 per cent of lower secondary teachers attended schools where principals reported that a shortage of qualified teachers was hindering quality instruction. This was considerably higher than the OECD average of 23 per cent, and represented a dramatic increase from 14 per cent in 2018.
The shortage looks different depending on location. In regional and remote communities, high-need schools, STEM subjects, and specialist roles including inclusive education, it is most acute, and its effects are felt directly in classrooms every day.
Amy Sharp has seen this firsthand. She recently spent time at a small regional school where each morning began with texting relief teachers to cover absent staff.
“On a good day, we were able to pull specialist teachers off their small group work,” she recalls.
“On a bad day we had to do that and collapse classes.
“Both had an impact on student learning, with the greatest impact on the most vulnerable students.”
The shortage is concentrated in ways that compound existing disadvantage, rather than being spread evenly across the system.
Subject-area shortages are significant and measurable. According to AITSL’s National Trends: Teacher Workforce report (June 2025), 38 per cent of mathematics teachers and 39 per cent of technology teachers are currently teaching out of field, meaning they are delivering subjects for which they lack full tertiary qualification.
In STEM subjects, Amy notes, the impact of this is already visible at senior school level.
“We are seeing fewer and fewer students choosing maths,” she said. “It is a bit of a vicious circle.”
Geographically, the shortage is steepest in regional, remote, and very remote schools. These schools struggle most to recruit qualified teachers, and high turnover means students often lose their teacher mid-year or face repeated disruption from unfamiliar relief staff. Specialist roles, including learning support, inclusive education, and allied health, face comparable challenges.
The demand side is also growing. Population growth, increasingly complex student needs, and rising expectations around wellbeing and inclusion mean schools are being asked to do more, with fewer people to do it.
The shortage has been building for decades, but several factors accelerated it. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated existing pressures, with related absences creating cascading coverage problems and many teachers reassessing their future in the profession. Since 2021, the proportion of teachers intending to leave before retirement has increased, while the proportion intending to stay until retirement has decreased.
The Australian Government recognised this in December 2022, when all education ministers agreed to the National Teacher Workforce Action Plan, committing to reforms across five priority areas: supply, initial teacher education, retention, elevating the profession, and data. The plan represents recognition of a problem that had been building for years.
Growing demand and workforce pressures
Australia has approximately 553,000 registered teachers. TALIS 2024 data shows shortages are hampering instruction quality in many schools. Population growth is one driver, particularly in south-east Queensland and outer metropolitan areas of NSW and Victoria, where rapid enrolment growth is outpacing the supply of qualified teachers. Increasingly complex student needs, including behavioural support, wellbeing needs, and inclusive education requirements, are also adding to the workload and support burden of existing teachers.
Retention challenges: teachers leaving the profession
According to AITSL’s 2025 National Trends report, 39 per cent of the teacher workforce intend to leave before retirement, with workload cited by 75 per cent of those as a reason. Work-life balance (69 per cent) and stress, mental health, and wellbeing (68 per cent) round out the top three, and these consistently rank as the primary drivers of teacher attrition in Australia.
Amy is direct about this, pointing out that teachers stay in the role despite the conditions.
“I think the question should be: why are teachers staying? In my experience it is definitely not the conditions, or the public perception of the profession,” she says.
“People stay in teaching for the joy of seeing young people learn and grow.
“They stay because they feel connected to their colleagues, the students and their communities.”
The early career period is particularly critical. Amy moved to the Northern Territory for her first teaching position straight out of university.
“The first years were hard,” she says.
“The students pushed me, tested to see whether I would stay.
“They had a saying up there that white folk were like the clouds, they came and they went.”
What kept her was a combination of peer support, experienced mentors, and a genuine connection to the community she was teaching in.
“We all went on to stay in the NT for many more years, meeting partners, having children and working in education.”
Teacher wellbeing, safety and working conditions
Full-time classroom teachers report working a median of 50 hours per week during school term, according to AITSL’s 2025 National Trends report. The TALIS 2024 Australian Report found that over one-third of both Australian lower secondary and primary teachers reported experiencing a lot of stress, with stress levels significantly higher than in 2018. Approximately one in seven teachers reported that their job had a substantial negative impact on their mental health. Many teachers love the work itself. What makes it unsustainable is the volume of administrative and compliance demands stacked on top of it.
Amy describes the moment she knew something had to change.
“I remember the exact moment on a hot Friday afternoon in Darwin, getting into the car with my three children, exhausted after a day of teaching a 5/6 composite class.
“I thought… I love teaching but I am exhausted.
“Part of the challenge was that I was also teaching out of area, a visual arts and humanities teacher working in a primary school, teaching all subjects.”
Initial teacher education pipeline constraints
Fewer people are entering and completing teaching degrees. AITSL data shows only 55 per cent of early career teachers received a formal induction in 2023, down from previous years. Financial pressures during unpaid placement periods have historically deterred career changers and graduates from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. The Commonwealth Prac Payment, introduced from July 2025, is designed to address this, providing financial support during teaching placements.
Geographic and subject-area shortages
Remote and very remote schools face the most persistent shortage. AITSL’s 2025 data shows higher proportions of early career and out-of-field teachers in these locations than in major cities, which means the students with the least access to experienced teachers are also among the most disadvantaged. STEM, technology, and arts subjects face the highest rates of out-of-field teaching nationally.
Perception, status, and career pathways
Teaching is not currently regarded as a high-status profession in Australia, and pay does not reflect the expertise and hours the role requires.
“Teaching is not a profession that is currently highly regarded in Australia,” Amy says.
“We often equate value with salary and teaching is not paid well for the work and the expertise teachers bring to the profession.”
Limited pathways for professional progression without leaving the classroom also contribute to attrition, as experienced teachers see few options for growth that do not involve moving into administration.
Shortages exist in every state and territory, but they vary significantly in character and severity.
National workforce reporting shows Victoria faces a projected deficit of over 2,000 teachers by 2030, with current shortages particularly acute in secondary education and STEM. Queensland’s challenge is more a retention problem than a recruitment one, with high early career attrition driving ongoing gaps. Western Australia recorded its highest rate of teacher resignations since 2005 in 2024-25, especially in remote regions including the Kimberley. In NSW, public school vacancies have decreased in recent years but remain concentrated in growth corridors and low-socioeconomic areas. South Australia, Tasmania, and the Northern Territory report ongoing shortages, with rural and remote schools in the NT and Tasmania struggling most due to isolation and housing barriers.
Across all states, the pattern is consistent. Shortages are worst in remote communities, disadvantaged schools, and specialist subject areas. These are also the places where effective teaching has the greatest potential impact.
Why is the teacher shortage a problem?
The most immediate consequence of teacher shortages is disruption to learning. When a qualified teacher is unavailable, classes merge, relief staff cover content they may not know well, and students, particularly those who depend on consistency and relationship for their engagement, fall further behind.
Amy describes what this looks like for the most vulnerable students.
“The bell goes, the student arrives, having had a hard morning, no breakfast, already primed for challenges they navigate every day as a young person with complex needs,” she says.
“Their teacher is sick and away.
“There is a stranger who doesn’t know their name, suddenly their day is no longer predictable, they no longer feel safe, the one person they had a connection with is not there.
“The effort they will have to invest to stay calm will prevent them from learning anything.
“For some students, this is their daily experience of school.”
The TALIS 2024 Australian Report is unambiguous that shortages are most severe in disadvantaged schools, with principals in socioeconomically disadvantaged schools reporting shortages at rates considerably higher than the OECD average. These are the students who most stand to benefit from stable, experienced, effective teaching, and they are the least likely to have consistent access to it.
Students with disability, students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, and students experiencing trauma or social disadvantage all rely disproportionately on the quality and stability of their classroom teacher.
Amy’s description of the regional school she visited captures it well.
Ten teachers in the school, one or two absent each day due to illness, each morning spent texting down a list of relief teachers and working with whoever responded. Specialist teachers pulled from small-group literacy work to cover mainstream classes, with classes collapsed when no one else was available. Students with additional needs losing the support they depended on. Students without prior relationship with a relief teacher needing to work harder simply to feel safe enough to learn.
Out-of-field teaching is another daily reality. A visual arts and humanities teacher, like Amy, delivering primary Science and Mathematics because no one else is available. A humanities teacher covering physics. A PE teacher running a STEM elective.
Make teaching more sustainable
Protecting time for planning and collaboration, reducing unnecessary administrative compliance, and ensuring teachers have access to classroom support staff are foundational changes. As Amy notes, many teachers would choose to stay in complex school environments if they felt part of a cohesive, supported team.
Support early career teachers to stay and thrive
Structured coaching and mentoring programs, reduced face-to-face loads in the first year, and genuine instructional leadership from school leadership teams are the interventions most likely to improve early career retention.
Strengthen pathways into teaching
Employment-based pathways that allow people to earn while they learn remove one of the key financial barriers to entering the profession. Career changers now represent a significant and growing proportion of new teachers: 52% of Teach For Australia’s 2026 cohort are mid-career professionals, and national data shows around 21% of early career teachers are aged 40 or over. People with diverse lived experience and professional backgrounds bring skills and perspectives that classrooms benefit from.
Invest where shortages hit hardest
Financial incentives for regional and remote postings, housing and relocation support, and community integration programs all improve recruitment and retention in hard-to-staff schools. Targeted recruitment for STEM and specialist roles, where the pipeline is thinnest, also needs to be part of the response.
Elevate professional growth and leadership
Clear pathways for professional progression that do not require teachers to leave the classroom would help retain experienced staff who want to grow without moving into administration.
Teach For Australia works directly on the recruitment, preparation, and retention challenges driving the shortage. Through the Leadership Development Program, TFA recruits high-potential graduates and career changers, places them in the schools and communities where qualified teachers are most needed, and supports them through a structured program of coaching, mentoring, and study toward a Master of Teaching (Secondary) (Leading Learning) through Australian Catholic University.
“Teach for Australia does an amazing job of attracting and retaining highly qualified people to become teachers, and we do this by tapping into their desire to make a difference and to be involved in really meaningful work,” Amy says.
The broader goal is to build a workforce that stays, leads, and contributes to system change over time. Every teacher who remains in a high-need school beyond their initial commitment, and every Alumni who moves into leadership, is part of addressing the structural shortage rather than cycling through it.
As Amy told us, teaching is “one of the most meaningful contributions you can make to the world.”
If you are considering teaching and want to work where it matters most, find out more about the TFA Leadership Development Program.
Which states or regions are most affected?
Shortages exist across every state and territory, but are most severe in regional, remote, and very remote areas. The Northern Territory and rural Tasmania face the most persistent challenges due to geographic isolation and housing barriers. Victoria faces a projected secondary teacher deficit of over 2,000 by 2030.
Which subjects are hardest to staff?
STEM subjects face the most significant shortages. Technology, arts, and mathematics have the highest rates of out-of-field teaching nationally, meaning students in these subjects are most likely to be taught by someone without full specialist qualification.
How can I become a teacher if I am changing careers?
Employment-based pathways are the most accessible option for career changers. Teach For Australia’s Leadership Development Program is specifically designed for high-achieving graduates and career changers, offering a fully employed teaching role from day one alongside a Master of Teaching through ACU.
