WA Education Minister Sabine Winton rejects claims large workload behind high teacher resignations

WA's education minister has rejected claims a record number of teachers quitting their jobs is due to them being overworked.

In its latest annual report figures, the Department of Education showed 1,279 teachers had resigned in 2024-25 — the highest number in a year since the data began being published in 2005.

At the same time, there are more teachers in classrooms than ever before, with more than 25,500 teaching staff employed in 2024-25.

The government had been criticised for its efforts to attract and retain staff, with some saying longstanding issues of worker shortages and burnout are to blame.

But WA's Education Minister Sabine Winton said while she agreed the numbers were high, she did not accept that all the resignations were because teachers are unable to cope with their workload.

"There are going to be resignations for a variety of reasons — what I want to do is minimise it," Ms Winton said.

The data showed in the two years from 2020 to 2022, the number of teachers who resigned more than doubled, and yearly resignations have stayed around that level since.

Ms Winton said it was unreasonable to compare the most recent figures with those experienced in the COVID-19 pandemic era.

"I think if you were to gather similar data on any other industry, whether it's police, nurses or even private industry I think you would find similar challenges in terms of attracting people into the workplace," she said.

"I'm interested in the most immediate years.

"I want to see a competitive environment where we have many teachers who are putting their hands up."

The data did show a significant growth in teacher support staff, almost doubling in size in the last two decades and largely keeping in line with the amount of teachers employed.

The Liberal's education spokesperson, Liam Staltari, blamed the high resignation numbers on teachers working in "complex and challenging" classrooms not being supported by the government.

"In WA, under this government, our teachers are overworked and under-appreciated," he said.

"They're concerning numbers and we call on the government to do more because what they've done to date is clearly not working."

'Decades behind'

The State School Teachers Union said the government had failed to keep up with changes in the classroom.

"WA is having a population boom at the moment, so we need more teachers in our classrooms," union president Matt Jarman said.

"What's going wrong in our classrooms is that we've got 1983 class size standards for 2025 complexities, behaviour, challenges and so on.

"We're not addressing that and that's why the resignation rate continues to climb.

However, the data showed a significant growth in the number of support staff in classrooms, which has almost doubled over the last two decades. 

Ms Winton said the teaching workforce had grown in line with the population, while 28 new primary schools had been built since 2017. 

Losing experience

Mr Jarman said the retirement of experienced teachers in particular was a huge burden for the rest of the system.

"They are such a source of information and knowledge handover for the young people coming in," he said.

"New people are leaving because that experience isn't there to mentor them."

The data shows the number of retiring teachers had also increased in the past few years after being relatively steady year-on-year during the 2010s.