‘This is soul-destroying’: Why more Australians are abandoning their jobs and turning to teaching
The number of people retraining or upskilling as teachers is creeping back up to pre-Covid levels as universities and governments throw millions of dollars at postgraduate schemes.
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The number of people retraining or upskilling as teachers is creeping back up to pre-Covid levels as universities and governments throw millions of dollars at postgraduate schemes.
New figures from the University Admissions Centre have revealed that for the 2025 academic year just under 670 people have applied for postgraduate teaching courses, nearly two and a half times the number of applicants who applied in 2023.
Offers for postgrad courses peaked with the 2021 intake, when 1217 offers were made across 60 courses, before sinking to 278 offers two years later.
However preliminary figures for 2025 indicated enrolments are on the rebound, while the number of degrees available has more than doubled to 126.
It comes as the NSW and federal governments fund scholarships and programs to the tune of $90 million in an effort to attract career-changers into the teaching profession, including funding the Teach for Australia (TFA) program which put 167 new teachers into classrooms this year.
The proportion of the TFA cohort considered to be career-changers, having graduated in their original qualification at least six years prior to taking up teaching, has grown from just 3 per cent in 2015 to 38 per cent in 2024.
University of Technology Sydney (UTS) senior lecturer in education Keith Heggart said while enrolments in the Master of Teaching did dip around 2023, the university is now seeing year-on-year growth.
Postgrad teaching students fall into “two main groups”, he said, the first being business professionals – predominantly male – coming to the end of their careers.
“They’re not going to be teachers for long, but they want to finish off their working life by sharing their wisdom and knowledge and experiences,” Dr Heggart said.
The second group are younger, more often women, in their first five years of their career and dissatisfied by it.
“A lot of this comes down to parental pressure – people who have done law, became a lawyer and said ‘this is soul-destroying’ … or people in science who realise that they don’t want to end up working as a drug rep or a medical equipment specialist,” Dr Heggart said.
Australian Catholic University Dean of Education Donna King said “it’s never been easier for career-changers to … earn and learn” with ACU’s employment-based scholarship on track to graduate 285 new teachers between 2026 and 2031.
The postgraduate teaching cohort “bring really diverse experiences and skills from … previous occupations” including winemakers, artists, photographers, farmers and accountants, she said.
“More of these career changers are seeing (teaching) as a dynamic and rewarding career, as well as quite a stable one when you’re in a challenging economic climate.”
Western Sydney University student Jasmine Kernaghan is in her final semester of her Master of Secondary Teaching after originally studying health science, and has already started work as a PE teacher at a high school in Western Sydney.
PDHPE is one of several teaching fields or ‘key learning areas’ in acute shortage, with up to one in three PE teachers working outside their field of tertiary study according to the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership.
“Coming from a small, rural, low SES area, I saw that the transient nature of teachers that came through our school really unsettles kids; kids who need to be able to build that sort of rapport and trust with their teachers,” Ms Kernaghan said.
“I see the importance of sticking around and getting to know the kids on that level, and providing more than just support in the classroom.”
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