Led by Dr Fiona Longmuir from Monash University, the survey canvassed the career plans and reflections of 8000 teachers, school leaders and education support staff who are AEU members in the state’s public schools.

They found seven in ten intended to exit the sector before retirement. 

Almost 40 per cent said they were unsure about whether they would continue in their roles, with the state’s teachers’ union deeming the research “a wakeup call” for Education Minister Ben Carroll and Premier Jacinta Allan. 

Longmuir told EducationHQ it was time the focus shifted from attraction and preparation to retention in our efforts to rope in the unfolding teacher shortage crisis. 

“It definitely seems to be something that we need to talk more about,” she said. 

“A lot of policy and public discourse – and effort and resources – goes into supporting teachers in their first five years, and we hear a common refrain around ‘30 to 50 per cent of those in the first five years leave the profession’, which is obviously incredibly important…

“But the message often that we get from that focus is that, a) they’re not prepared well enough, which takes us to blaming ITE programs, and, b) that we should invest in that early career stage to support them, and then they'll be OK.”

What this study shows is that there’s a significant number of mid-career teachers who have been well prepared and who have stayed the course in schools, and yet they too end up quitting, Longmuir flagged. 

“There’s something about being in the job that is wearing them down and pushing them out.

“It’s not an individual issue with whether they’re suited or not, or that they haven’t been prepared well enough. 

“It’s actually just that it’s tough and is wearing them down and burning them out.

“So it really, really makes a strong case for the fact that … it doesn’t matter what we do in attraction and preparation (measures), if we’re not supporting them when they’re in the job for their career – no amount of work in the earlier stages is going to help them deal with really challenging circumstances.  

“So, I think it’s a really important point to make about where we focus our attention and our efforts to support our schools,” Longmuir said. 

Also of concern is the loss of expertise and experience that goes with these teachers when they do eventually turn their back on the profession, Longmuir warned. 

“If we lose that mid-career expertise, we’re losing the people who train the young teachers. 

“We’re losing the potential school leaders into the future, when we also know that workforce is being rapidly depleted. 

“So that loss of human capacity in that mid-career stage is really troubling,” she said. 

Unreasonable workloads were cited as the prevailing factor behind educators’ plans to leave, as well as inadequate pay. 

On average, the study found teachers were clocking up around 12.4 hours of unpaid working hours a week. 

“There’s lots of comments around ‘we’re not being paid for the hours that we do’, essentially, but also that ‘no matter how much we do, it’s never enough. We still feel like we can’t keep up. We can’t do what we need to do’,” Longmuir explained. 

It’s often a devastating predicament that many teachers are left to grapple with, the expert added.  

“…these people go into the profession because they care, because they want to do a good job – and part of what is burning them out is feeling that no matter how hard they work, they’re still letting kids and communities down. 

“It’s that almost moral trauma ... it can be devastating and really challenging to deal with when you’re giving everything to it, and it’s still never enough.”

The sheer intensity of teachers’ work in schools also emerged from the survey. 

Student needs have become more complicated, teachers reported, with greater mental health challenges and any array of neurodiversities needing to be catered for in the classroom. 

“The other big thing, obviously, is the social (and) economic volatilities in the world that invade classrooms, from the Israel-Palestine conflict, to misogynistic attitudes … teachers are managing that all the time, every day, in classrooms. 

“And then, of course, the other really big thing they talk a lot about is the excessive administration, meetings, compliance requirements, all [of those things]," Longmuir said. 

The research informs the first in a series of public education discussion papers titled ‘What the profession needs now for the future’, put together by Monash researchers in partnership with the Australian Education Union (AEU) Victoria. 

Branch president Meredith Peace suggested the findings confirm that the Department of Education has “dumped administration and regulatory work on school staff when they should be able to fully focus on educating students”.

 “Meanwhile, salaries in Victorian public schools do not reflect the complexity of teaching or adequately cover the hours worked, and are not competitive with teachers in other states and territories or the private sector,” Peace added.

“The lack of real ongoing action by Minister Carroll and Premier Allan, such as providing a retention payment to encourage existing staff to stay, signals that they think it is OK for some children and young people not to have a permanent teacher. 

“Our students, their families, and our community deserve better than that.”

Longmuir said the “general hope” prevailed that people would come to have a better understanding of teachers’ work via the research project. 

“And that we can come together more as a community, to think about the way we're doing [school education] and what we're expecting of our students and teachers.”