Ever wonder what it’s like to be a teacher today? New research exposes a “perfect storm” of pressures – from overwhelming workloads to dwindling resources – pushing educators to their limits worldwide. It’s not just a local issue, but a global crisis demanding systemic change. Are we truly supporting those who shape our future?
Across the globe, the teaching profession is grappling with an unprecedented crisis, a “perfect storm” of converging pressures that threatens its very sustainability. New research, encompassing seven diverse education systems, reveals a profound impact of unsustainable workloads and diminishing resources, painting a stark picture of the challenges faced by educators from Scotland to Australia.
This comprehensive publication, spearheaded by Professor Moira Hulme of the University of the West of Scotland and published by the British Educational Research Association (BERA), consolidates findings from comparable English-speaking education systems including Scotland, England, Wales, Ireland, Alberta (Canada), Tennessee (USA), and Victoria (Australia). The collaborative project distinctly highlights a developing teacher crisis that transcends national borders, indicating a universal struggle rather than isolated incidents.
The study found remarkable consistency in the challenges pressing upon the teaching profession worldwide. A dramatic increase in workload, an overwhelming rise in students’ additional needs, and a critical lack of necessary resources are collectively exerting significant negative impacts across all examined regions. While specific local drivers may vary, the overall detrimental effect on school staff remains strikingly similar, signifying a systemic problem rather than individual failings.
Researchers emphatically warn against proposed solutions that focus solely on increasing individual resilience and coping strategies for teachers. They argue that such approaches are insufficient and inappropriate given the magnitude of the problem. Instead, the crisis in educator wellbeing must be recognized as a “structural phenomenon requiring a systemic response,” emphasizing the need for policy-level changes rather than placing the burden on individual educators.
Illustrating these systemic pressures, the research highlights specific struggles within various jurisdictions. In Wales, for instance, teachers are described as being “on the edge,” with a nearly threefold increase in professionals leaving the sector between 2020 and 2023, many before retirement. Similarly, Irish school leaders report immense pressure, spending excessive time on administrative tasks rather than core leadership or curriculum planning, consistently citing unmanageable workloads as their primary source of stress.
Further afield, the Canadian province of Alberta faces “extraordinary pressure” due to significant increases in student numbers without proportional funding, compounded by unconsulted testing regimes and curricular changes, leading a third of teachers to consider leaving. In Tennessee, high educator attrition rates create a “leaky bucket” scenario, exacerbated by policy shifts that have impacted educational research and teaching quality improvement programs, deepening the resource scarcity faced by schools.
Australia mirrors these concerns, with teachers, like their global counterparts, quitting due to unmanageable workloads, particularly mid-career educators. Victoria’s public school principals fear insufficient staffing, foreshadowing challenging years ahead amidst falling teaching degree enrollments and rising pupil numbers. These disparate yet convergent issues underscore Professor Hulme’s observation that “you’ve almost has got this perfect storm that looks different and might have different drivers and different national and regional jurisdictions, but nevertheless the outcome is this huge pressure on teachers to try and deliver the work that they came into the profession to do.”
A poignant theme emerging from the various contributions is the conceptualization of the workload crisis as causing “moral injury” to educators. Teachers, who entered the profession driven by a desire to help young people, find themselves in impossible positions within systems that often fail to adequately support students or even act as barriers to their success. This inability to fulfill their fundamental purpose leads to a particularly corrosive feeling, severely impacting their wellbeing and professional identity.
Ultimately, the multinational project emphasizes that the “bigger issue really was around the sustainability of the teaching profession,” underscoring that this challenge is neither cultural, national, nor personal. Policy responses centered on individual resilience are insufficient. The research advocates for creating an education system that empowers educators to effectively perform their crucial role, rather than expecting them to merely “cope with unsustainable working conditions,” ensuring a sustainable future for teaching.
