Why more than half of Australian teachers plan to walk away from the job

More than half of Australian teachers plan to walk away from the profession, saying they are undervalued and overworked.

New research from Monash University reveals three in five teachers feel they are underappreciated and the hours they put in outside of the classroom are not recognised.

These feelings of under-appreciation persist, despite surveys of the public revealing 93 percent of people feel teachers are trusted and respected.

Dr Amanda Heffernan, lecturer at Monash University’s Faculty of Education, said reasons for teacher dissatisfaction were surprising.

“The pay wasn’t as much of an issue as we expected,” she told 3AW’s Ross and John.

“What really came through was the work load and the subsequent flow on effects in terms of health and wellbeing.”

While teachers get more holidays than those working in most professions, they are clocking up significant hours outside the classroom.

“Australia’s teachers actually work some of the highest hours in the world. They work significantly above the average of teachers around the world,” Dr Heffernan said.

“The holidays might sound really great in theory, but in practice a lot of that work is really spilling out into those break times and personal times.”

Staggeringly, three quarters of teachers said their current workload is not manageable.

Less than two per cent of those surveyed said they “strongly agreed” that they could manage their workload.

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Image: Getty