Here is the fundamental question: if you wanted to drive a qualified professional out of a job, what would you actually do? Pay them poorly relative to inflation. Overload them with administrative tasks. Make them feel disrespected by politicians. Remove their agency over curriculum and assessment. Reduce their pension entitlements. Then, when they leave, refuse to acknowledge that your own policy choices drove them away.
This is not an exaggeration of what is happening to Australia's teachers, nor is it a left-right political issue. It is a competence issue. And the evidence, when you strip away the talking points, is damning.
Schools across New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and South Australia are now openly rationing classes. Some secondary schools have capped Year 7 and Year 8 enrolments. Specialist subjects in science, languages, and mathematics have been cut because there is no qualified teacher to teach them. Schools in disadvantaged areas report they cannot fill permanent teaching positions and are running entire year levels on casual teachers who change week to week.
The Australian Education Union documents that nearly one-third of schools report they have attempted to hire for permanent positions and failed to attract qualified applicants. When positions do get filled, schools increasingly hire people without formal teaching qualifications or education degrees. Let us be honest about what this means: children in these schools are receiving instruction from people without professional preparation in pedagogy, curriculum design, or assessment.
The counter-argument deserves serious consideration. State education ministers point to federal funding: the government funds only 80 per cent of public school costs, they argue, forcing states to stretch limited budgets. The federal government responds that it cannot micromanage state employment decisions and that states need to reform their industrial relations arrangements to allow merit-based pay. Neither statement is false. Both are also beside the point.
The real problem is straightforward. Teacher salaries have failed to keep pace with inflation and with comparable professions. In real terms, a teacher starting work today earns less than a teacher starting work in 2015. Meanwhile, cost-of-living pressures—rent, childcare, energy bills—have intensified. A qualified secondary teacher with ten years' experience earns roughly $85,000 to $95,000 annually. A first-year lawyer earns $75,000 to $85,000, but faces faster progression and higher ceiling. A nurse earns less, but faces less public criticism and less administrative burden.
Universities have noticed. Teaching degree enrolments fell by 10 per cent between 2020 and 2024. Those who do train as teachers are more likely to leave the profession within five years. Why would they stay? The intrinsic rewards of teaching are real, but they do not pay rent.
If we accept that premise (and the evidence strongly suggests we should), then the policy responses should follow logically. Increase salaries. Reduce non-teaching administrative load. Fix the superannuation arrangements that have made teaching pensions less attractive. Respect teacher professional judgment on curriculum and assessment rather than mandating constant policy churn.
Other countries have attempted this. The United Kingdom faced its own teacher shortage crisis in 2022. It responded with targeted wage increases for maths and physics teachers (the hardest to attract) and streamlined administrative requirements. Recruitment improved. Not solved completely, but meaningfully improved. Canada did similar work. Neither country found that throwing money at the problem alone fixed it, but both discovered that money was a necessary component of any credible solution.
Australia, by contrast, has pursued incremental adjustments. A small pay rise here. A state-based scheme to recruit overseas teachers there. Promotional campaigns asking young people to consider teaching as a career while offering them no financial incentive to do so.
Strip away the talking points and what remains is this: both the federal and state governments have decided that fixing the teacher shortage is less politically costly than finding the revenue to do so. They have chosen to tolerate a shrinking, demoralised profession and rationed education in disadvantaged schools because the alternative requires political will neither level of government possesses.
This is not inevitable. A government serious about the problem would announce a multi-year wage increase for teachers, front-load it in the first two years to accelerate recruitment, and remove the administrative burden of constant curriculum review. The cost would be real: perhaps $3 billion to $5 billion annually. But the cost of not doing so is also real: a generation of students in under-resourced schools receiving education from casual teachers who are themselves underprepared for the role.
Voters deserve better than a bipartisan commitment to inadequacy. If the problem is too expensive to solve, state and federal leaders should say so clearly, accept responsibility, and explain to Australian families why their children will receive an education below the standard of comparable democracies. If the problem is solvable but merely inconvenient politically, they should stop pretending it is unsolvable and do the work required.
The evidence points to one conclusion: governments can fix this. They have simply chosen not to. That choice will echo through Australian classrooms for years.