Why students are shunning education degrees and teachers are quitting the classroom

Year 12 students are shunning teaching degrees, and those who start them are dropping out in record numbers, leaving thousands fewer graduates to fill shortages.

It comes as teachers say they are being driven out of the profession by high workloads and poor student and parent behaviour.

Laurise Narse will quit teaching after 22 years and run her own tutoring company.Credit: Wolter Peeters

New data reveals that the number and rate of students beginning education degrees have been falling since 2020. Only 11,099 NSW students began an education degree in 2023, or 10.46 per cent of new university enrolments. That’s compared with 15,022 students in 2020, who made up 12.54 per cent of new university students.

The number of students who complete their undergraduate teaching degree within four years has also fallen dramatically over the past 10 years.

Of Australian bachelor students who started their degrees in 2020, 29 per cent graduated within four years, compared with 43 per cent of those who started in 2010.

Some 11.74 per of 2020 students never returned after first year while the number of students who re-enrolled in second year but dropped out within four reached a record high of 16.85 per cent.

Monash University education researcher, senior lecturer Fiona Longmuir, said more teaching students were needed, but retaining those already in the system had to be prioritised.

“People are leaving the profession because of the conditions and the challenges they are working with, and that means we’re losing a whole range of expertise and training and mentors for teachers doing their training,” she said.

“The issues of retention make the profession less appealing for people who are thinking about coming into the profession, so while we’re not attending to the issues of conditions for the teaching workforce, it’s going to be very hard to attract the number of teachers that we need.”

Longmuir said research showed high workloads, a lack of respect for the profession, poor student and parent behaviour, and pay were the top reasons teachers quit.

“Almost all schools would be having to think about their teacher supply much more than they ever have before because of the extent of the shortages,” she said.

‘It’s getting harder’

Sydney primary school teacher Laurise Narse will quit after 22 years, blaming the increasing workloads and high demands.

She has instead opened a tutoring business, Success Tutoring Parramatta, to fulfil her passion for educating young people without the stress of the classroom.

“It’s getting harder and harder to be a teacher: the admin, the growing expectations of teachers, the student behaviour worsening and the extra workloads,” she said.

“There is a lot more administration work to do on top of the lesson planning, marking, assessing and reporting. We also have to ensure that we are catering for the diverse needs of all of our 30 students and use different teaching delivery methods, resources, etc., to help them successfully access the curriculum.”

A review into teacher education released this year, headed by Sydney University vice chancellor Mark Scott, found misconceptions about the professions, including the starting salary, discouraged people from choosing to teach.

“More needs to be done to elevate the status of the teaching professions as an important step towards attracting suitable candidates,” it read.

NSW Education Department secretary Murat Dizdar and Scott will address a “future teachers conference” at Sydney University on Wednesday, aiming to encourage more young people to consider a career in teaching.

Scott will tell the conference new teachers need the best possible support as they start their careers. “We need to boost enrolment rates by making teaching more appealing and to retain more teachers in the profession,” he will say.

‘Positive signs’

Education Minister Prue Car laid the blame for NSW’s teacher shortage on the previous Coalition government.

“The Liberals and Nationals presided over a teacher shortage crisis with teacher vacancies hitting a record high of more than 3000, and resignations outstripping retirements for the first time,” she said.

“Since coming to government, we have worked hard to make the teaching profession respected and desirable again by delivering a historic wages uplift for our teachers.”

Car said there were “positive signs”, with resignations and retirements trending downwards and teacher vacancy numbers at a three-year low. There were 2604 resignations and retirements in 2024 compared to 2860 in 2023.

Western Sydney University School of Education senior lecturer Rachel White said young people had a better understanding of what kind of work-life balance they wanted, and teaching sometimes lacked flexibility.

She said the young people she worked with chose teaching to make a difference.

“They say things about how they were inspired by their own teachers, or some students I’ve worked with have taken a gap year and done some work with young people, and that’s what’s inspired them to go into teaching,” White said.

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