Public school principals say they are losing teachers to private schools who can offer tens of thousands more in pay.
They say government budgets are not big enough to compete amidst a national teacher shortage.
Many private schools are able to pay salaries that outstrip those in the public system.
In the past 12 months, jobs advertised in inner-city private schools have offered base salaries up to $160,000, and rural principals have reported high offers in the regions too.
Those salaries are tens of thousands of dollars higher than what the state system can offer most teachers.
In New South Wales, a state school classroom teacher's base salary tops out at $113,000, and in Victorian schools it is $112,000.
Some teachers will be able to top up their salaries through bonus and retention mechanisms but, with Australia facing an "unprecedented" teacher shortage, public school principals have told the ABC they still cannot compete on pay and conditions.
Regional schools losing teachers
John Freyne, the principal at Traralgon Secondary College in Victoria's Gippsland region, said several teachers had come to him asking for more money, having been offered higher salaries to work at local private schools.
He said he could not match the offers.
"We're certainly not as free as private sector schools would be … [to] offer higher salaries," he said.
Mr Freyne said his school was between four and six teaching positions short at the end of 2022.
While shortages at Traralgon have been filled by relief teachers lured via state government-funded bonus payments, other principals are turning to teaching students to fill the gaps.
Fellow regional principal, Wodonga Middle Years College's Maree Cribbes, said she had recently lost a staff member to a private school, making her 13 positions short ahead of the school new year.
"Actually finding qualified teachers is not possible at the moment," she said.
Ms Cribbes said at the end of last year the Victorian school employed eight teaching students in the final year of their qualification, to fill the gaps.
"More senior staff are becoming burnt out because they're having to mentor and support the youngest staff in the school, who often have had very little or no experience in schools," she said.
"We've had to combine classes to make bigger classes, with students having different teachers, students having inexperienced teachers."
Principals have 'never seen anything like this'
Mr Freyne said the fact private schools get significant government funding, on top of their student fees, enabled them to pay higher wages to attract teachers.
"What they receive from the government would be 60-70 per cent of my total budget, so the federal funding provides them with a greater capacity to pay staff," he said.
And while the Victorian public schools' enterprise agreement does allow teachers to earn an extra $10,000 as a "retention incentive", Mr Freyne said it was not a realistic solution because paying the bonus to every teacher would make school budgets unworkable.
Mr Freyne said he had "never seen anything like this" in his 34 years in the profession.
Federal government acknowledges 'real issue'
A Victorian Education Department spokesperson said it was already doing all it could to retain teachers and to entice retired teachers back to the profession.
The department has offered thousands of dollars in bonuses for 150 roles in hard-to-staff and regional schools around the state, like Traralgon Secondary College.
It has also offered cash for 100 teachers to relocate from overseas into hard-to-staff schools, while the Commonwealth has prioritised qualified teachers as part of its expanded skilled migration program.
Meanwhile, New South Wales Minister for Early Learning Sarah Mitchell defended the latest public schools' enterprise agreement, which delivered a three per cent pay rise for teachers from June last year.
She also pointed to the "Excellence in Teaching" reform being led by Melbourne University expert John Hattie, which could see the top 10 per cent of teachers being paid salaries on par with school deputy principals.
However, Ms Mitchell conceded public schools were underfunded according to allocations set out in the Gonski funding agreements.
Ms Mitchell called on the current federal government to increase its contribution in the next five-year funding deal for both public and private schools.
In December, the Albanese government announced it would extend the current funding agreement by one year, to allow time for a funding review.
It means the government's in-principle commitment to lifting government funding for public schools will be delayed for another year, which unions say will mean public schools continue to lose teachers to the private sector.
Federal Education Minister Jason Clare has acknowledged the scale of the problem.
"This is a real issue, principals and teachers have both talked to me about this," he said.
Mr Clare agreed "pay is important", but said fixing entrenched equity problems would take time and money.
The Independent Schools Association was contacted for comment.
