Australia's teachers are burnt out and fed up. Here's why

Ryan Johnstone's friends were always shocked when he'd describe his typical week as a high school English teacher.

"[I'd work] 70 hours a week. I'd start my day at 7am and I usually would finish around 7pm," he tells ABC RN's This Working Life.

"Or, I would have had a break [in the evening], and then I'd go back to it after dinner from 8pm to 10pm-ish."

For Johnstone and many other teachers like him, work would not end on a Friday evening.

"I'd always work on the weekends … And certainly during the holidays, I wasn't on a lilo in the sun, working on my tan."

After 21 years as a teacher, Johnstone found himself buckling under these pressures, so at the insistence of his partner, he decided to take this year off.

Stories of teacher burnout are becoming more common, at a time when the country is grappling with a teacher shortage crisis.

So what needs to change in one of our most important but under-appreciated professions?

'Feeling like they're not enough'

Earlier this month, the Productivity Commission released an interim report on the review of the National School Reform Agreement, which is aimed at lifting the nation's educational outcomes.

The report painted a grim picture for teachers. A heavy workload and poor work-life balance were cited as the main reasons why teachers are considering leaving the job. Insufficient pay was much further down the list.

It's something Meg Durham knows too well. Durham was a teacher for almost a decade, but quit five years ago to start a new career helping teachers improve their mental and physical wellbeing.

"My classroom has changed now — I work with lots of different teachers around Australia," she says.

Durham says her "heart aches" at hearing stories of teacher burnout, like Johnstone's.

"Every teacher that I talk with, every day, is feeling the weight of expectation — feeling like they're not enough, like they're not doing enough," she says, with the "emotional load" pushing teachers to breaking point.

The Productivity Commission's report also found that while Australian teachers work more hours than many of their international counterparts, much of this is "low-value tasks", such as "communication, paperwork and other clerical duties".

"Even when you look at getting a Band Aid, you think, 'Oh, no, I have to fill in a form about this'. There's so much."

Too many students

Over his more than two decades in the classroom, Johnstone says there has been a big shift in what's expected of teachers.

"One of the biggest challenges that we're facing as teachers now is the ever-increasing expectation that every student is seen as an individual," he says.

Johnstone says while "it's an entirely reasonable expectation that every parent wants their child to be seen as an individual", there's one big problem: Class sizes have remained stubbornly large.

To illustrate this point, he says a high school English teacher may have five classes, with 26-30 students in each class, meaning as many as 150 students at a time.

"In an age where every student needs to be seen as an individual, if you have 150 of them, that mental load, the emotional load, is astronomical," he says.

"You are thinking about every one of those kids every night when you go home and you are knowing every day that you haven't spent enough time with any number of them."

So what needs to be done?

"[So] I think governments just need to understand that they're going to have to take a really hard look at how many students each teacher is asked to be responsible for."

But others think that a much bigger cultural change is also needed.

'We get treated as if we're children'

Briony Scott is principal of Wenona School in Sydney. Her CV also includes principal of Sydney's Roseville College.

Scott is sick of her profession being criticised and belittled. So she's been speaking out.

For her, teachers need not just smaller classes and better pay, but a lot more respect, from children, parents and wider society.

"[Many people] have no problem challenging teachers, because the assumption is that we're somehow not very bright. That's the rhetoric in the media … Because we work with children, we get treated as if we're children," Scott says.

"What I find really interesting is the absolute assumption that we basically don't know what we're doing. And therefore people who genuinely have no clue somehow have no problem in telling us what to do. And that's what I object to."

"This is my workplace. This is my career. I have worked very hard for this job. I have spent a lot of time studying. I engage in a lot of ongoing learning … It's such a difficult thing for people to comprehend that this is a specialty, this takes years."

And her message to those criticising Australian teachers?

"Have you seen some of the young people coming into teaching? They're phenomenal. They will have your guts for garters."

More parental involvement

Jane Horne is well placed to talk about what's changed in the classroom — she's been in the profession for almost four decades.

Today, Horne is a teacher at Geelong Grammar and in her seventh year of managing the school's boarding facility.

"It's become a lot more parent focused," she says.

"We very rarely saw a parent in my early days. They'd come to a sports event and that was about it. They certainly wouldn't ring you up on the phone to question what you're doing. That's been a huge change."

"[Parents] bomb in straightaway, with no thought for anyone else's feelings or how [an issue] might have played out. They're very much of the opinion that their child is 100 per cent right and couldn't possibly have done that."

Horne also echoes the Productivity Commission report, mentioning the burden of "low-value tasks". As the admin of other professions is becoming more streamlined, it appears teaching has moved in the opposite direction.

Horne advocates getting students "off campus" for different experiences, but "the challenge is that it takes 15 pieces of paper in triplicate and risk assessments and all the rest of it".

And, as many other teachers would recognise, technology in the classroom can be a blessing, but also a curse.

Yet after all these years, Horne still loves her job.

"Every single day I make a difference. And I think that's really an honour and a privilege."

Regional and rural schools

Today's challenges in the classroom can be exacerbated the further you move away from a city.

Just ask Shannon Treacy. He's a high school teacher in Cohuna in northern Victoria.

"We used to have around 2,500 people living in Cohuna. However, in the last 10 years or so, due to drought and other things, a large number of those have moved away," he says.

"Trying to get [teaching] staff to Cohuna is very, very challenging. We've had a chemistry position [advertised] for nearly 12 months and we cannot get anyone to apply for that."

"You're asked to take on extra responsibilities, teach extra classes, take those extra curricular things that otherwise you wouldn't have to … It leads to burnout."

Like most teachers, Treacy says he "really struggled with COVID".

He sums up: "The isolation, the online classes, it was horrible".

At the end of his tether, Treacy sought help from Durham's organisation and started to address his mental and physical wellbeing.

"I allowed myself time just to try and rest. You feel like you're always at everyone's beck and call."

'You are having such an impact'

Despite these challenges, Durham says teachers need to know just how much they matter.

"Every time you turn around, someone's telling you 'You need to do more, you need to do more, you need to do more'," she says.

"The kids will remember how you made them feel — and we can all remember that teacher that made us feel amazing."