top of page
Search

The Changing Face of Australian Schools

Leticia Quoc-Touch
11 minutes ago
6 min read

Looking back at my 13 years of schooling, it feels strange to think that I’ve only left the classroom almost two years ago. The memories are still relatively fresh, the friends and classmates who’ve encouraged me and filled the classrooms with so much joy and laughter, the teachers who have supported my education and gave me invaluable advice, the endless assignments and exams and not to mention the tedious routine of turning up to school five days a week. 


Yet even in the short time since graduating, I’ve found myself wondering whether something has changed, perhaps more accurately, whether something was already changing while I was still in school. Throughout high school, I remember hearing bits and pieces on the news about teacher shortages, declining literacy and numeracy results and students struggling to stay engaged. At the time, I didn’t really think too deeply about this issue and just shrugged it off, partly because I always believed that my own experiences at school were fairly representative. 


Where have all the teachers gone?

Australia is experiencing a growing shortage of teachers, leaving schools struggling to fill classrooms and placing upwards pressure on those already working in the profession. According to the 2024 OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS), 41.9% of Australian lower secondary school principals reported that teacher shortages were hindering the quality of instruction, almost double the OECD average of 23.1%. The problem is particularly pronounced in public schools, where 58.1% of principals reported a shortage of teachers, compared with just 24.8% in private schools. 


On top of that, 64.6% of Australian teachers reported experiencing considerable stress at work, well above the international average of 43.4%. Behind these figures is a profession struggling not only to attract new teachers, but also retain those already in the classroom, with one in two new teachers leaving the profession in their first five years. Heavy workloads, administrative responsibilities and the demands of managing classrooms with the number of students growing exponentially, making teaching difficult to sustain as a long-term career. But when schools cannot fill vacancies, the consequences extend beyond teachers themselves; having to rely on casual staff, combine classes or ask teachers to take on subjects outside their area of expertise simply because the show must go on. 


 The impact of the teacher shortage is not always immediately visible, it has a domino effect on students. It means less individual attention when classrooms are understaffed, greater disruption when schools have difficulty finding replacement teachers, or less consistency in the classroom when teachers are stretched across multiple responsibilities. This can be especially frustrating for students in their final years of school as they depend on their teachers to explain difficult concepts, provide feedback and help them prepare for their exams. When that support is limited, students can find themselves having to take greater responsibility for filling the gaps in their own learning. In 2024, ABC News reported that thousands of Victorian students returned to school without a permanent classroom or subject teacher, with some schools cancelling subjects. For one Year 12 student, Aidan, the shortage meant his VET Engineering Studies subject was cancelled because the school couldn’t find a teacher. Instead of completing a one year post-school training, he will have to go through a longer pathway of a four-year apprenticeship. 


Looking back, this issue feels much closer to home. In Year 12, I experienced firsthand what it meant to have teachers who were not formally qualified to teach subjects they were responsible for. As a result, I was often left in the dark or given ambiguous explanations when I struggled to understand certain concepts, leaving me to turn to YouTube to fill in the gaps and find answers to my seemingly endless questions. While the school was doing their best to fill gaps in staffing, the experience made me reflect and question how much teacher shortages can ultimately affect the quality and consistency of education students receive.


Aussie Kids Are Falling Behind? 


NAPLAN (National Assessment Program - Literacy and Numeracy) is Australia’s nationwide assessment of students’ literacy and numeracy skills, taken by students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9. Its results provide a snapshot of how Australian students are performing compared to the national standards, making it one of the clearest ways to examine whether educational outcomes are improving or falling behind. According to ACARA’s (Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority) release of the 2026 NAPLAN results, reading and writing scores are regressing for almost every age group, with one in three students failing to meet NAPLAN benchmarks. Additionally, one in ten needed “additional support” meaning that they were “not working towards expectations and may need individualised assistance to progress. 


Guardian graphic Source: Acara 
Guardian graphic Source: Acara 

Although there were some improvements in the Year 5, 7 and 9 national numeracy levels, with the highest national average score of 67% and more than 29,000 students reaching “exceeding”, Year 3 students achieved an all time low for their national numeracy levels since the testing reform in 2023. The education minister, Jason Clare has plans to revise and audit numeracy curriculums across primary school levels. He also identified that utilising “explicit teaching methods” such as phonics, small-group tutorial sessions to give students who are struggling with more intensive support, as potential ways to help students meet national standards. The federal government’s additional $20 billion investment in government schools also aims to support the implementation of standardised curricula, Year 1 phonics and numeracy checks, and evidence-based teaching practices, with the broader goal of improving foundational literacy and numeracy outcomes across Australian schools. 


NAPLAN is not the only indicator suggesting that Australian students are falling behind. Looking beyond our national assessments, the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) illustrates a similar picture. Every three years, PISA assesses the reading, mathematics and science skills of 15-year-old students across the globe, allowing Australia’s results to be compared both internationally and with its own past performance.  


ABC News Source: OECD
ABC News Source: OECD

While Australian students still performed above the OECD average in mathematics, reading and science, the data above shows that Australia is experiencing a long-term decline, especially in reading and mathematics. Compared with students who sat PISA in the early 2000s, Australian 15-year-olds in 2022 scored more than 25 points lower in both mathematics and reading. Put simply, this represents a substantial decline in performance over just two decades, with today’s 15-year-olds performing at levels significantly below those recorded by Australian students of the same age in the early 2000s. 


Asian education systems dominated the PISA 2025 rankings, with Singapore, Japan, Korea, China and Chinese Taipei among the highest-performing systems across the three subjects. Australia, still while performing above the OECD average, fell considerably behind these leading education systems, raising questions about whether our schools are keeping pace with some of the world’s strongest performers. 


The challenges facing Australian schools extend beyond test scores. Students are now learning in an environment that looks fundamentally different from the one these education systems were designed around. OECD suggests that because of the presence of digital devices, attention is harder to maintain, and generative AI has introduced an entirely new way for students to access information and complete their schoolwork. By 2025, generative AI has become a significant part of students’ educational lives, where students utilise it to explain concepts, research information and do all their work. While these tools can support learning, the OECD report also highlights a crucial distinction; using AI to help understand something is very different from using it to do the thinking altogether.  


So, What Happened to Australian Schools? 


Ultimately, Australian schools are not simply getting worse, nor can the challenges facing them be attributed to one single cause. Perhaps the world around them has changed, and the education system has struggled to change with it. From teacher shortages and classroom disruption to declining results and the arrival of generative AI, the pressures facing schools today look very different from those we faced even a few years ago. 


Having left school only two years ago, I don’t think the answer is to return to the way education used to be, but instead it is time to ask what education should look like now that students are growing up with AI at their fingertips and for teachers expected to prepare them for a future that is becoming increasingly harder to predict. The question isn’t just as simple as ‘What happened to Australian schools’, but rather how to adapt to these changes. 


References:

 
 
 

Comments

bottom of page