Enough is Enough! Why Teachers are Looking at Other Career Options

According to British philosopher Bertrand Russell, ‘teachers are more than any other group the guardians of civilisation.’ This is powerful affirmation of the worth of teachers to society and the benefit they provide to students in their charge and to their families in turn.

Consider the work of the classroom teacher and you can generate quite a list of roles and responsibilities that constitute what teachers do day in and day out. They teach, provide counselling care, they nurse and comfort and perform a myriad of other tasks by and large with enthusiasm and care. When does it become too much; when is enough, enough?

The horse has bolted it seems in terms of teacher morale as many are deciding to leave the profession. Consider Frank, a Melbourne public secondary school teacher, who declares: “Four years into teaching and leading a team, I am burnt out, constantly in a state of high anxiety and counting down to the end of each term.” And another teacher who reports a younger colleague leaving the profession who says, “after a short spell (she) quit to pursue a profession that would not take such a toll on her physical and mental health.” And another who said, “I started passionate and finished exhausted!”

And then there’s the casualisation of teacher employment where people are put on contracts depending on a variety of variables. Some are reemployed on a yearly basis, their goal to hopefully one day achieve permanency status. However, it remains very much a lottery for many whose prospects are always, it seems, uncertain. William asserts that, “Temps really have to commit to wherever they are, without receiving any corresponding commitment in return. That is quite degrading.” William decided to leave teaching as, he claimed; “I felt I could not sacrifice health and sanity to such a tenuous existence.”

“I feel burnt out, anxious, exhausted, disillusioned and undervalued,” says a Teacher colleague

It’s projected that by 2030 NSW will need 11,000 new teachers as the student population is projected to grow by 200,000! What does this mean for education going forward? If teachers are leaving because of poor morale, what can be done to head off what some might say is a crisis in the making?

NAPLAN is a recurring talking point amongst educators. The AEU’s 2021 State of Our Schools survey of public-school teachers, principals and education support staff reveals that the overall impact of NAPLAN on these groups is overwhelmingly negative citing stress as being common to all groups surveyed. The preparation for and administering of the NAPLAN testing regime itself, according to 73% of principals surveyed, adds significantly to teacher workload. And 83% of principals say that NAPLAN “contributes to students’ stress and anxiety.” So, it is clear that NAPLAN adds to student stress and anxiety, and teachers’ increasing workloads without properly assessing student outcomes and achievements.

‘Performativity’ is another phenomenon of the teaching world that has been discussed broadly and is defined thus, ‘a mode of regulation that employs judgements, comparisons and displays as a means of incentive, control, attrition and change.’  As teachers work has become more prescribed by others who determine what is taught and how it is taught, teachers’ agency and opportunity to create their own methods of teaching and ways to engage with their students is diminished. Teachers are left to ask themselves ‘why am I doing this?’ and the answer increasingly is, ‘I do what I do so it can be assessed and compared with other schools’ performance.’ In the case of NAPLAN teachers are teaching to the test so that results are optimised which will reflect well on the teacher, and the pressure is relentless. If their students do well, their performance is looked on favourably and they are (for the time being) considered an asset to the school; they are ‘good’ operators, ‘good’ teachers.

And have you heard about ‘the good teacher myth?’ The term is heard in the staffroom at school and often in public debate on the airwaves and in the newspapers. ‘Good’ teachers have all the qualities desired to do a ‘good’ job and to be a ‘good’ operator. Good teachers should be able to manage a diversity of student dispositions and behaviours it has been said, and class size is not the issue, its ‘good’ teacher competency that makes the difference.

To live up to the ‘good’ teacher ideal is often beyond the realms of reason and puts teachers in a difficult situation where they begin to doubt their ability to teach and their overall confidence as a person.

Further reading
Ball, S.J. (2003). ‘The teacher’s soul and the terrors of performativity,’ Journal of Education Policy 18(2), pp. 215-228.

Butler, J. (2006). Gender trouble: feminism and the subversion of identity. New York: Taylor & Francis.

Ruitenberg, C.W. (2007). ‘Discourse, theatrical performance, agency: the analytic force of “Performativity” in education’, Philosophy of Education 2007, pp. 260–268.

Frank: The Guardian, June 2021 by Bill Tomalin.

William: ‘Everyone’s bailing’: Australian teachers speak on stress and uncertainty of increasing casual contracts by Naaman Zhou, The Guardian.

‘Tell us what the shortage of teachers in Australia means for you?’ Australian Education, The Guardian, June 2021.

NAPLAN ineffective and outdated: public teachers and principals, AEU Journal,

15 December 2021.

The culture of performativity in Education (askanacademic.com) Sept. 2019 (5)

Giulio is an ED.D. candidate at the University of South Australia. He is a student counsellor in the public school system and specialises in Rational Emotive Behaviour Education. He is also a consultant to schools in counselling-based behaviour education systems in school. He is the author of two self-published teacher/counsellor resources; People and Emotions and Have a Go Spaghettio! both endorsed by Dr. Albert Ellis, creator of Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy. He is a member of the International Committee for The Advancement of Rational Emotive Education.

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