New school year: Education Department staff ready to fill vacancies as schools grapple with teacher shortages

Bureaucrats from Education Department headquarters are poised to fill classroom teaching gaps and 60 international recruits will start new jobs as public schools across WA continue to grapple with staffing shortages. As a record number of 498,700 students from kindergarten to Year 12 were set to start the new school year at public and private schools on Wednesday, State School Teachers Union president Matt Jarman said some schools were still battling to fill positions. “We’ve definitely been told that central office staff have been identified to help fill vacancies over the first five weeks, if they are required,” he said. “We’re not feeling a crisis level of anxiety as we’ve seen in the last few years. Principals accept they’re part of a national and global teacher shortage crisis, so they’re just getting on with it more now. “Of course, those schools that don’t have sufficient staffing or fully-qualified staff … that places pressure on existing teaching staff to carry the load.” Regional Principals Association president Kevin Brady said some country schools were collapsing classes or reducing options for students to take subjects such as art because they still faced critical shortages. Incentives to lure teachers to the bush had helped ease the shortfall in the past two years. “But in some locations those staff shortages are still critical,” he said. “(At) a number of schools in the Wheatbelt and even schools in the South West — which is fairly unprecedented because normally those are attractive locations — we’re seeing schools in those areas that are unable to attract the staff they need for the start of the school year.” Director-general Jay Peckitt said the Education Department had been proactive in supporting schools to prepare for the start of the 2025 school year. “Every year registered teachers, who work in central or regional offices, express their willingness to return to schools, should that be required,” he said. So far this year, one centrally-based teacher had been deployed to a regional school. Mr Peckitt said ongoing recruitment efforts through internal teaching pools, employment-based pathways, early engagement of pre-service teachers and international recruitment had ensured schools were staffed from day one. Sixty overseas teachers will take up their first teaching jobs in public schools in 2025, he said, bringing the total number recruited through the program to 242 since it began in 2023.