The National Teacher Survey conducted by the Black Dog Institute in February 2023 found that relative to the general population*, teachers reported elevated levels of stress, anxiety and depression.

Key findings

Workload: Approximately 70% of the teachers reported having unmanageable workloads. The majority (85.4%) of teachers reported arriving to school earlier than they were required to.

Teacher Shortage: The majority of surveyed teachers reported a teacher shortage in their school (76.9%). One quarter (25%) of surveyed teachers reported teaching classes outside of their area of training regularly.

Intent-to-leave the Profession: Nearly half the sample (46.8%) said they were considering leaving the profession in the next 12 months.

Sick leave: On average teachers were taking 2.5 sick days in the last 28 days, of these 1.5 were reported as being due to mental health or emotional problems. In other words, 60% of teacher absences in the previous month were due to a mental health or emotional problem.

Mental health, stress and burnout

Relative to the general population (Crawford & Henry, 2003), teachers reported elevated levels of stress, anxiety and depression.

Stress: Specifically, the proportion of teachers reporting moderate to severe stress was 59.7% relative to 11.4% in the general population.

Depression: 52%, of teachers reported moderate to extremely severe depression compared to 12.1% in the general population.

Anxiety: 46.2% of teachers reported moderate to extremely severe anxiety compared to 9% in the general population.

More than three quarters of surveyed teachers (75.6%) indicated that they felt ‘burned out from my work’ either ‘often’ or ‘all the time’.

Concerningly, 41.9% of teachers reporting feeling ‘like I’m at the end of my rope’ 41.9% either ‘often’ or ‘all the time’.

Wellbeing: Fewer than 20% of teachers reported feeling optimistic about the future. When asked If teachers were feeling relaxed over half responded 'rarely' (51%) or 'none of the time' (14.5%).