A first-year teacher has told a NSW parliamentary inquiry they have turned to alcohol to cope with the overwhelming workload and feel "ashamed" for not being able to support their students.
The admission from the unidentified teacher was part of a report by an Upper House committee into the teacher shortages across the state.
Although the government says there is adequate teacher supply to meet demand until at least 2025, the NSW Teachers Federation maintains there is a "crisis" which is being felt from "Balgowlah to Broken Hill".
The inquiry, chaired by One Nation leader Mark Latham, found workload pressures were pushing teachers to the brink and were a key contributor to people abandoning the profession.
The anonymous teacher said their school wasn't "badly affected" by shortages but their workload was "ridiculous" and it was impacting on their mental and physical health.
"I was never much of a drinker. I drink considerably more now that I've become a teacher, and I know that a lot of other teachers I know do that as well," they said.
The teacher said "meaningless" administration tasks were chewing up all their time and they no longer had the capacity to plan any lessons.
"The students get what I have time to come up with on the day, and I feel ashamed about that. My students do not get the education they deserve if I do not have time to plan and prepare for it," they said.
"I'm about a year in and I'm considering or looking at other avenues of employment."
The Teachers Federation gave evidence to the inquiry that seven out of 10 teachers were reconsidering their future due to the demanding workloads which often spilled out into their family lives.
The inquiry's final report said workloads would be reduced if teachers restored discipline and order in schools.
"Chaotic classrooms and playgrounds are not only bad for student learning, they create a huge workload on teachers, drawing them away from their core instructional role," the report said.
It recommended more schools adopt the model of structured classroom order in place at Marsden Road Public School in Sydney's west.
Students at this school participate in a boot camp at the beginning of the year to learn their responsibilities in the classroom so teachers have more time to teach.
The inquiry also concluded the best way of dealing with the long-term problem of teacher shortages was to lift the status of teaching so the public viewed it as an honoured profession.
"Often teachers and their trade union will say they want to be treated as a proper, modern profession. But this cannot happen unless they are willing to adopt modern professional standards. They can no longer have the best of both worlds: non-stop public demands for higher pay, plus sheltered working conditions," the report said.
But comments like this were condemned by some members of the committee, including the Greens' Abigail Boyd, who said Mr Latham had used the report to air his own agenda.
She said Mr Latham had made a "mockery" of the Legislative Council committee process and made negative reflections on teachers' professionalism, work ethic and capacity.
She also took issue with the suggestion that a crackdown on discipline would be a fix for teacher workload.
"The experts' evidence invariably was to recommend an increase in classroom supports and resources, not a further tightening of disciplinary measures," she said.
Ms Boyd apologised to the education experts and community members who contributed to the inquiry which she said had become an "incoherent grab bag of the personal opinions and gripes" of Mr Latham.
Labor's Anthony D'Adam and Courtney Houssos also gave dissenting statements.
