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.
The OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) 2024 shows that lower secondary teachers in Australia have the third longest working week in the OECD [Chart below]. They work 46.4 hours a week behind only Japan (55 hours) and New Zealand (47.5). The working week for Australian teachers is much longer the OED average of of 41 hours. By contrast, lower secondary teachers in Finland work 36 hours a week while Türkiye has the shortest working week at 31 hours.
The long working week in Australia is due to long hours of non-teaching duties. Australian lower secondary teachers spend fewer hours teaching than the average for the OECD but have the second largest non-teaching burden.
The survey shows that Australian lower secondary teachers teach an average of 20 hours a week compared to the OECD average of 22.7 hours [Chart 2]. Teachers in Cost Rica teach 32 hours a week and those in Chile 30 hours while teachers in Norway teach 16.6 hours a week and those in Japan teach 17.8 hours.
Australian lower secondary teachers spend 26.4 hours a week on non-teaching tasks. This is the second longest in the OECD behind Japan with 37 hours a week [Chart 3]. This is much longer than the average for the OECD of 18 hours a week. Teachers in Türkiye spend nine hours a week on non-teaching tasks.
The main factor contributing to the non-teaching load is planning, marking and collaboration with colleagues. Australian lower secondary teachers spend 18.1 hours a week on these tasks. This is the fourth highest in the OECD, only marginally behind teachers in Costa Rica, Colombia and Slovakia [Chart 4]. The average for the OECD is 15 hours while teachers in Finland and Turkiye spend 10 hours a week on these tasks.
Fifty per cent of Australian teachers consider excessive marking of students’ work a source of stress. This is amongst the highest in the OECD, behind only Portugal (77%), Norway (52%), Netherlands (52%) and Sweden (51%).
One cause of the excessive hours on marking student work is likely to be preparation of students to take NAPLAN tests. TALIS 2024 was conducted in two phases – Term 1 2023 and Term 3 2024 and the teacher questionnaire asks how many hours teachers spent on tasks in the last complete eek of teaching. A feature of Term 1 in Australian schools is a frenzy of practicing for NAPLAN and it is likely that what teachers see as excessive hours on marking student work is related to NAPLAN. Moreover, NAPLAN applies to two of the lower secondary years, that is, Years 7 and 9.
Research on classroom time spent practicing for NAPLAN is limited and dated. However, a recent study noted that schools do practice tests for many weeks prior to the tests. A State of Our Schools survey conducted by the Australian Education Union in 2020 found that 66% of teachers consider that NAPLAN increases their workload. A survey conducted by the Independent Education Union in 2019 found that “schools are spending a ludicrous amount of time preparing for tests” [A response by the Union to the Education Council of the Council of Australian Governments, September 2019]. However, it is to be noted that other OECD countries also conduct standardised testing during secondary school but it is not clear whether they involve a similar intensity of classroom practice as in Australia.
Another significant aspect of the long non-teaching hours is the time spent on administrative tasks. Teacher surveys show this is a major source of discontent among Australian teachers and a factor contributing to teacher attrition. TALIS 2024 shows that lower secondary teachers in Australia spend an average of 4.7 hours a week on administrative tasks [chart 5]. This is the fourth highest in the OECD, behind Korea, Japan and Chile. The average for the OECD is three hours. Teachers in Finland and France spend only 1.5 hours a week on administration.
Administration and compliance work is a major source of stress for Australian teachers. TALIS 2024 found that 69% of lower secondary teachers considered that administrative work is a source of stress. This is the third highest in the OECD, behind teachers in Portugal (79%) and Belgium (70%).
It should be noted that TALIS is about lower secondary teachers and does not include information about other teachers. Some of the figures may look different if there was separate data about primary school teachers or those teaching in senior high schools. Moreover, interpretation as to what constitutes workload may vary between countries. Consequently, these findings may not provide a complete picture of the state of teacher workload.
Reducing teacher workload is part of the priority given to retaining teaches in the National Teacher Workforce Action Plan (NTWAP) announced in 2022. It provides funding for a Workload Reduction Fund to pilot initiatives to examine ways of reducing teacher workload.
A Productivity Commission report found that teacher workload is the main factor behind teachers’ intention to leave the profession. It criticised the NTWAP because it “does not provide a systematic way to identify and reduce burdens on teacher workload across all jurisdictions and sectors” [p. 13]. It called on governments to “make more consistent and concerted efforts” to reduce the workload.
Reducing teacher workload was recommended by the report by the Expert Panel on a Better and Fairer Education System. It said:
Reducing the additional burdens on teachers is essential to attracting more suitable people to the profession and retaining the skilled and passionate teachers we have. [p. 132]
A profound insight into the workload of teachers is provided by an audit of the administrative tasks of teachers conducted by the NSW Department of Education in 2024. The audit identified the range and complexity of what teachers actually do in schools. It found that policy is the main driver of operational tasks in schools and identified 201 policies which are difficult for schools to access, use and implement. The audit also identified 105 tasks with processes considered “frustrating, painful, cumbersome, or overly complex” and causing a high or very high workload. Some 30 or so tasks with very high workload involving teachers included complex and manual paperwork, increased curriculum differentiation and resource creation, greater administration required for student wellbeing.
A review of administrative and compliance activities in Victorian public schools in 2024 found that teachers are spending an average of eight hours a week on administrative and compliance work which is diverting teachers from their core tasks of teaching and supporting students. Some 77% of teachers surveyed said that the administrative and compliance workload had been getting worse for some time. The report found that growth of departmental programs and policies has contributed to increased administrative and compliance workload.
There is also evidence for a sustained increase in administrative and compliance workload in department policies and programs, which have grown over time, often in response to external regulatory or accountability requirements. ..
New requirements compound over time to create a large workload, and it is rare to remove older requirements as new ones come into effect. [pp. 25,26]
Many other studies show that workload and its associated stress are a major factor in teachers leaving the profession. For example, a recent paper identified several key elements in teachers’ working conditions, experiences at work and health and wellbeing that impact on decisions to leave the profession. The first in a series of papers by academics at Monash University on the future needs of the teaching profession found that administration and compliance activities, and meetings, take disproportionate teacher time and are often not seen as valuable for teaching, learning and wellbeing.
Another recent paper on teacher workload found that administrative duties, compliance requirements, and excessive data collection are taking time away from lesson planning and student engagement. This is leading to burnout and a sense of professional disillusionment
The growth in reporting and compliance requirements for school principals and teachers is reflected in the huge growth in central office executive and administration staff that far outstrips the growth in students and teacher numbers.
Governments have increasingly recognized that teacher workload is a major policy issue that restricts teacher supply and the learning of students. However, little progress has been made in reducing workload. Total working hours and non-teaching hours in TALIS 2024 are unchanged from TALIS 2018. Time spent on administration was virtually the same as in TALIS 2018 – 4.7 hours compared to 4.4 hours, an increase of 18 minutes per week.
Governments have introduced a variety of measures to reduce teacher workload. For example, the NSW School Admin Reduction Program aims to employ more administrative staff in schools and to improve the operational efficiency of schools by improving the management of school systems and processes. There is no mention of reducing the range of policies and procedures identified by the audit report.
The Victorian Government has a program to reduce face-to-face teaching time in 2023 and 2024 to allow more time for planning and collaboration. It also introduced a program to save teachers time writing occupational health and safety reports. It recently announced an Operational Teaching Assistant trial to help with administrative tasks in schools such as collecting payments and entering data. It also announced that it will track the administration and compliance workload and set improvement targets. Once again, there is no mention of reducing the range of policies and procedures imposed on schools by central office.
At the end of October, the Queensland Government announced a red-tape reduction program for schools. It includes simplifying processes for reporting behaviour and health and safety incidents in schools. It also aims to streamline and automate administrative processes in schools and simplify and rationalise policies, procedures, and initiatives impacting schools.
It is doubtful whether these policies and actions are sufficient to resolve the workload issue because they fail to consider several matters:
- Teachers’ workload is not just a time issue but also involves the intensity of’ work;
- Reducing teacher workload is a funding issue;
- Reducing central office demands on teachers is critical;
- Pilot projects can be a way of delaying effective reduction of workload.
The growing complexity and intensity of teachers’ work in schools is not fully addressed by current policy responses. Researchers have found that concentrating on reducing workload by one or two hours is not sufficient because it does not address the complexity and intensity of teacher work and the burnout it leads to.
As an article in the Queensland Teachers’ Journal states:
Too often, proposals to solve the problem of teacher workload fail to consider the complex cognitive, emotional, or psychosocial labour required to perform tasks. Time poverty is the relationship between the amount of work a teacher or school leader does and the intensity or complexity of that work. Addressing time poverty must be a focus of governments and school systems to make teaching more attractive and sustainable.
Reorganising the work in schools is critical to resolving workload issues. Professors Pasi Sahlberg and Sharon Goldfeld have proposed that schools be reconfigured to focus as much on the wellbeing and health of students as their academic learning. The proposal advocated for schools to function as ‘multi-opportunity communities’ or community hubs designed to optimise ‘whole child development’ that set students up for lifelong success.
A series of reports by the Monash University Faculty of Education recommend that schools need more teachers and allied professionals to support the learning of students. Public schools are vastly underfunded and will remain so for at least another ten years. Full-service or community schools are designed to provide integrated educational, health and social supports and there is strong evidence of their success in the all-round development of children.
This highlights the importance of funding in resolving workload and work intensity issue. The massive under-funding of public schools restricts the learning , health and well-being of students. Full funding would enable implementation of full service schools. It is a funding priority.
Another problem with current approaches to reducing teacher workload is that they largely ignore a key source of the workload, namely, central and regional office reporting and compliance requirements. Little is being done to reduce this. As noted above, the workload programs of the NSW and Victorian governments appear to have ignored the findings of their respective reviews of teacher workload. Cutting back bureaucracy in central office and schools frees up funding for more teachers and other professionals to directly support the learning and well-being of students.
Simply employing more administrative staff in schools to cope with the demands of central and regional offices diverts more funding away from directly supporting students. Employing more allied professionals to support student well-being would contribute to reducing time spent on reporting and compliance as would streamlined central and regional office demands on teachers.
Reducing teacher workload is largely hived off to pilot projects. Several governments have announced pilot projects to reduce the administrative workload of principals and teachers. As a recent academic paper noted:
…policy actions remain in the pilot phase, under development, or only loosely tied to teacher retention. [p. 456]
Pilot projects are not needed to reduce teacher workload. The NSW audit report and the Victorian independent review called for education departments to reduce the reporting and accountability demands on teachers. In the context of all the research now available on teacher workload in Australia, pilot projects to reduce workload appear to be a way to delay real action.
TALIS 2024 adds to the mountain of evidence on the heavy workload and associated stress endured by Australian teachers. Much more than the existing programs is needed by governments to reduce the workload. The heavy workload is a major factor in attrition from the profession and the difficulty in attracting new entrants. The learning and well-being of students is at stake. Fully funding public schools to employ more teachers and allied professionals is fundamental to reducing the workload.