Teachers are facing a more complex classroom. Photo: Ian Bushnell.
ACT teachers are looking to the ACT Government’s new school resourcing review to deliver the funding needed to deal with an array of issues highlighted in a recent staff survey.
The Australian Education Union has released its State of Our Schools Survey 2025, revealing growing student complexity, workload pressures and persistent shortages of wellbeing and support staff across Canberra’s public schools.
The findings come at a challenging time for ACT public schools, 84 per cent of which are expected to miss their budgets this year, primarily due to staff salaries.
AEU ACT Branch president Angela Burroughs said the results highlight the urgent need for additional investment in staffing and student support to relieve pressure in classrooms.
“Teachers and principals across Canberra have told us that workloads are unsustainable and that schools need more specialist staff to meet students’ learning and wellbeing needs,” Ms Burroughs said.
Calling for extra, even if targeted, spending in the middle of a school funding crisis may sound incongruous, but Ms Burroughs said it was time for Education Minister Yvette Berry to deliver on her promise that every child across every school is getting the funding required to give them the best possible education.
Ms Burroughs said the way to do this was through the resourcing review that Ms Berry agreed to at the union’s urging.
“A properly funded ACT public education system means that we can guarantee that there is a qualified teacher in every classroom every day, that we can guarantee that extra support is provided to students when they need it, and that we can guarantee that alternative programs are available to students who need additional support,” she said.
“Only then will we be able to say that the ACT has resourced the future that its students deserve.”
In the survey, ACT principals reported that the complexity of student needs had increased in the past three years, driven by mental health and wellbeing challenges.
Teachers were also working longer hours, with most saying administrative demands are reducing the time they have to focus on teaching and learning.
There were not enough counselling and wellbeing staff to meet demand, with many students waiting weeks for access to support.
Teachers reported significant increases in behavioural issues, learning difficulties and student disengagement since 2022.
They supported the expansion of small tutoring groups to improve literacy and numeracy outcomes, but access remains inconsistent across ACT schools.
Ms Burroughs said the resourcing model was stuck in the pre-COVID era.
She said there were now more students with complex needs and community expectations were higher.
“That’s reflected in our class sizes that are from that era as well,” Ms Burroughs said.
She said the need for more mental health support for students had been obvious for some time.
The AEU had long called for one school psychologist per 500 students, a ratio that had never been met and was likely insufficient today.
“Interestingly, the resourcing panel, which met only last week, has already identified our schools doing the heavy lifting from other government areas and we’ll be really interested in their investigations in that regard,” Ms Burroughs said.
She said the Directorate appeared confused about school staffing.
It recently provided contradictory statements on the number of school staff, stating that a recent head count conducted by principals had found 150 surplus staff, including 100 teachers, yet it also claimed that it could not fill all roles.
“We have unfilled teacher positions and they’re trying to claim that we’ve got a surplus of staff,” Ms Burroughs said.
“It just shows how broken the system is.
“We are putting a lot of faith in the resourcing panel to be able to come up with some recommendations about the baseline staffing required to properly fund ACT schools, what ACT public schools are expected to deliver, and the costings associated with delivery of those core services.”
