Australia is running out of teachers, and students are being asked to replace them

An international survey found 58% of Australian principals reporting teacher shortages, more than double the OECD average, while states like New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia continue to advertise thousands of vacancies.

To keep schools running, states have expanded use of Permission to Teach, a special approval that places unqualified education students directly into classrooms.

"In my school, that was the only way we were surviving," said Chris Smith, who until last year was a deputy principal at a Queensland public school, ABC News reported.

Queensland issued 1,294 Permission to Teach authorities last year, while Victoria has granted 1,347 approvals as schools struggle to fill empty roles. Smith said the pressure on unqualified teachers is enormous.

"More and more they are people who are in their third year or second year of studying and what they are having to do is study and teach and work at the same time... And that's hugely challenging for them, and their schools try their best to support them, but it is a huge, huge challenge," he said.

The consequences are visible in schools like Elizabeth Macarthur High in New South Wales, where principal Kylie Hedger described how bad things became before extra funding arrived.

"A few years ago, it was extremely difficult and we couldn't always guarantee we could put an adult in front of a class," she said, as cited by ABC News. "We had to do some quite extreme measures, including combining classes and taking out walls."

The school later qualified for recruitment bonuses of up to 20,000 AUD, which Hedger called "a game-changer".

The Guardian reports that Australian teachers now work an average of 46.5 hours per week, significantly above OECD norms, and that record numbers are considering leaving.

Education experts say the system is now relying heavily on inexperienced graduates. Monash University professor Jo Lampert told ABC News that Australia is "sending them into really complex situations... where workloads are high, morale is low, and the risk is that we will burn them out quickly and turnover will not be solved at all."

A national survey found 47% of early-career teachers expect to leave the profession, while another 40% are unsure.

States have agreed to a national Action Plan to lift training pathways and retention, and annual applications to teaching degrees have risen about 7% since 2022. New South Wales reports some progress, with public-school vacancies down 61% over three years. But unions say schools still need more funding and more staff to reduce pressure on existing teachers.