Teachers – SOS Australia

Increasing Bureaucracy Swallows More of Public School Funding

Trevor Cobbold / December 3, 2025December 3, 2025 / Funding, Public education, Teachers

Increasing bureaucracy is a feature of public school systems in Australia. The growth in administrative staff in schools and in central departments has far outstripped the increase in teachers and students since 2015. The most dramatic staffing growth has occurred not in classrooms but in state education departments.

The growth in administrative staff reflects increasing reporting and compliance regulations required by governments in the face of the increasing complexity of student needs and expectations about service provision. It is absorbing an increasing proportion of expenditure on public schools. More funding is being diverted from core functions of teaching and supporting the learning and well-being of students to administrative and operational tasks. Moreover, there is widespread evidence that teachers are over-loaded with administrative tasks themselves. A key issue is to identify what is necessary and reasonable and what is unnecessary and wasteful of time and resources. Reviews of the workload on teachers in public schools in NSW and Victoria have revealed that teachers face much unnecessary administrative work.

OECD Survey Shows Australian Teachers Have a Very Heavy Workload

Trevor Cobbold / November 17, 2025 / Teachers

New figures released by the OECD show that Australian teachers have one of the heaviest workloads of in the OECD. Their working week is one of the longest in the OECD because of a large non-teaching workload. The heavy workload is a key factor in teacher stress, wellbeing, and resignations. Governments have failed to reduce the workloads, thereby exacerbating the ongoing shortage of teachers. More comprehensive policy initiatives and programs are needed to reconfigure the work of schools to reduce teachers’ workload and better support student learning and well-being.

Australia Has Amongst the Highest Teacher Shortages in the OECD

Trevor Cobbold / October 21, 2025 / Teachers

A new OECD report reveals thatAustralia’s education system is facing a diabolical staffing crisis. Since 2018, teacher shortages have soared leaving Australia among the worst-performing nations in the OECD on this measure. Despite the scale of the problem, little meaningful action has been taken to reverse the trend.

The lack of qualified educators is most acute in public schools, disadvantaged schools and schools in regional towns. There is also a very large shortage of special education teachers. Among OECD countries, Australia records the largest shortage of staff in disadvantaged and regional town schools, and the second largest in public schools.

School Funding in a Time of Teacher Shortage

sosaustralia / February 22, 2024 / Funding, Teachers

The spectre of teacher shortage will haunt the next meeting of Australia’s education ministers.

Without swift action from Commonwealth and state/territory governments, this growing crisis will exacerbate the difficulties that commonly face disadvantaged schools in finding sufficient teachers for students most at risk of falling behind.

Australia is poorly placed to deal with this crisis. OECD data shows that 34 per cent of students enrolled in a disadvantaged school in Australia lack sufficient teaching staff, compared to 3 per cent in an advantaged school. This not only puts students at risk as individuals. It also entails risk to the wider society, through planting the seeds of social division.

New Plan to Solve Teacher Shortage Ignores Root Causes

sosaustralia / August 15, 2022 / Teachers

Last Friday, Australia’s state and federal education ministers met with emotional teachers, who spoke of working on weekends and Mothers’ Day to cope with unsustainable workloads – and how they were thinking about leaving the profession.

This was part of their first meeting hosted by the federal minister Jason Clare. The top agenda item was the teacher shortage.

A Letter to Parents on NSW Teachers’ Strike

sosaustralia / April 30, 2022 / Funding, Teachers

The following is a letter to parents from the NSW Teachers’ Federation on the forthcoming strike by teachers.

Every day across NSW, children are missing out because of a lack of teachers. It’s an unacceptable situation affecting public and private schools. Children can’t put their education on hold and wait for this to be fixed. They have a right to be taught by a fully qualified teacher today and every day. This is why teachers and principals have made the difficult decision to go on strike on Wednesday, May 4.

What it Means to be a Teacher

sosaustralia / February 20, 2021February 20, 2021 / Teachers

This article is reprinted from Larry Cuban’s blog on School Reform and Classroom Practice. Larry is Professor Emeritus of Education at Stanford University. It is an abridged version of a speech to graduates and their families in June 2001. It is just as pertinent today as in 2001.

I have thought a lot about the past 46 years I have spent in education. I have taught in urban high schools and Stanford for many years [in addition to being an administrator]. It is teaching – not administration or scholarship [however] – that has defined me as an adult….

Teaching has permitted me to be a lover of ideas, a performer, a lifelong learner, a historian, a writer, and a friend to former students and colleagues. For these reasons and because at this moment in our nation’s history teachers have moved to the top of the nation’s school reform agenda, I want to comment today on both the exhilarating and troubling aspects of teaching….

Funding, Enrolments and Staffing in NSW Public Schools

sosaustralia / June 16, 2020June 16, 2020 / Funding, Teachers

The following is a summary of a submission to the Independent Inquiry on the Teaching Profession in NSW Public Schools. The full submission can be downloaded below.

The NSW public education system has undergone a huge expansion in bureaucracy since 2003. There was a massive increase in administrative staff in schools and in central and regional offices that is many times greater than the increase in students. Yet, there was only a very small increase in inflation-adjusted funding per student despite a large increase in disadvantaged students. Expanding the bureaucracy was prioritised over funding classroom learning and support. As one former principal told Save Our Schools, it reflects an “increase in roles orchestrating compliance not teaching, learning and curriculum”.

Too Many Classes are Taught by Out-of-Field Teachers

Trevor Cobbold / May 18, 2020May 18, 2020 / Teachers

Many Year 10 students in Australia are being taught key subjects by unqualified teachers according to a major new study. It found that 15.5% of Year 10 classes are being taught by teachers out of their field of expertise. Twenty per cent of mathematics classes and 21% of English classes are taught out-of-field. The study found that 12.5% of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) classes are being taught out-of-field. This is likely an under-estimate because of inadequate data on science teaching.

Teachers Say There is Too Much Administrative Work & Stress in Schools

Trevor Cobbold / March 30, 2020March 30, 2020 / Teachers

Over half of all secondary school teachers in Australia report that they have too much administrative work which takes away time for preparing for classes and is a major source of stress. A quarter of teachers say they experience a lot of stress at school. These are amongst the highest percentages in the OECD. They are significant factors behind teachers leaving the profession. These are significant factors behind teachers leaving the profession.

Australian teachers also have less professional autonomy over classroom content and assessment than in other OECD countries, but there is more professional collaboration in Australian schools. However, a majority of teachers do not believe their profession is valued by society.

These are key results from the OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS), an international survey of school teachers, school leaders and the learning environment in schools released this month. The report provides important insights into the state of the teaching profession in Australia and other countries.