A $14-million government program to attract teachers to work in New South Wales schools has been labelled a failure by the teachers union, with several schools still with vacant positions.
The Recruitment Beyond program was announced in 2021 with a goal of recruiting more than 560 teachers from interstate and overseas by 2024.
But, so far, only 11 teachers have been recruited through the program to start work by term one this year, Education Minister Sarah Mitchell has confirmed.
Dubbo representative of the NSW Teachers Federation Brayden Holland said the government's ongoing failure to recruit more staff was leading to widespread burnout on the ground.
"Teachers are humans and the government tends to forget that; they look at us as if we're numbers," he said.
"But caring and compassionate people are really hard to find, and we need to bring a level of respect back to this profession."
Ms Mitchell said the federation's criticisms of the four-year program were an unfair union beat-up.
"This is the union in the lead-up to an election deliberately trying to muddy the waters," she said.
"We've had more than 12,000 expressions of interest [through the program] and more than 450 prospective teachers from overseas are currently going through the recruitment process."
Ms Mitchell said the program was "taking a little longer than we would like" due to border closures and delays in getting visas approved.
A Department of Education spokesperson said visa processing times could vary from one week to 18 months.
Ms Mitchell said Recruitment Beyond was just one program in the government's $125-million strategy to boost teacher numbers, which had delivered 460 teachers and trainees since 2021.
Today, the government announced a range of new incentives for teachers to move to some regional areas, including an $8,000 relocation grant and $10,000 stamp duty relief for homebuyers.
However, the federation said the government was refusing to heed their main demand of "competitive salaries" to retain NSW teachers.
Mr Holland, who teaches history, geography, Japanese, and Aboriginal Studies, says teachers do unpaid overtime and spend the bulk of the school holidays preparing for different classes.
"Pay us what we're worth," he said.
"The average teacher works more than 52 hours per week.
"I know all the staff I work with are working 60-plus hours per week and we do that because we care."
What the numbers say
The Orana region, which is made up of 12 local government areas in central and north-west NSW, is one of the most understaffed regions in the state.
In term four, seven of the state's 20 most understaffed schools were in Orana, department data found.
It included Brewarrina Central School, which had a 54 per cent vacancy rate, and Walgett Community College High School, which had a vacancy rate of 47 per cent.
The state's most understaffed school was Wolumla Public School on the Far South Coast with a 73.5 per cent vacancy rate, but Ms Mitchell said all positions at the school were filled in time for the start of the 2023 school year.
The union said since 2011, NSW teacher vacancies have steadily increased from about 1,000 to over 2,000 at the end of 2022.
In term four, there were also more than 1,000 executive teacher vacancies and 75 school counsellor vacancies across the state.
Ms Mitchell disputed this, and said vacancy rates overall have "remained stable", with more than 2,100 vacancies filled since November.
NSW is heading to a state election in March, and the opposition's education spokesperson Prue Car said Labor's policies would address the "root causes" of the teacher shortage.
"We are going to make at least 10,000 temporary teachers permanent, cutting admin workload for teachers [and] scrapping the wages cap so that teachers can be paid more," she said.
