Sabine Winton says more teachers resigning because young teachers ‘particular’ about working arrangements

Education Minister Sabine Winton has laid some of the blame for WA’s record teacher resignation numbers on younger graduates who are more “particular” about their working arrangements.

Ms Winton — a former primary school teacher herself who left the profession to, ultimately, pursue politics — was responding to The West Australian’s story revealing teacher resignations had reached a 20-year high last financial year.

She said younger teachers were much fussier with their working arrangements than the older generation.

“I think when you analyse the resignation data, I don’t think it’s of any particular cohort, sometimes I get asked it’s new teachers that resign after three or four years in the system,” she said.

“In fact, I’ve spoken to principals who say some young people, if they can’t get the particular work fraction they want then they’re out of the system.

“Young people are much more particular about their particular circumstances and what they want to work in, when I went into teaching there was an over supply of teachers and the only way you got a job is by putting your hand up for two, three years in the bush.

“Circumstances have changed for people, people have got much more agency, other opportunities in the economy and so that also drives some resignation.”

According to the 2024-25 Education Department annual report, resignations hit a new high of 1279 in 2024.

While Ms Winton was not able to say whether there had been an increase in teachers over the last year, the annual report did show a slight increase in teachers, with an additional 455 roles, or a 1.8 per cent rise.

Meanwhile students enrolled in either public or non-government schools increased by 1.8 per cent in semester one this year from the start of last year.

Ms Winton also acknowledged the profession was harder now than it had been in the past.

“I’m not going to for a moment, not acknowledge that teaching is tough and it has become more difficult, over many press conferences and any teacher I talk to, teaching is a very different enterprise from what it was 15 years ago,” she said.

“It is more challenging in terms of the additional needs of students, it’s more challenging because of the expectations on the community, and we as a government are responding by investing more than ever in schools to support the work and the changing climate in the work that they do.”

According to State School Teachers’ Union WA president Matt Jarman the issue of ballooning workloads was not just affecting young graduates.

He said he had observed teachers retiring in their 50s instead of their early 60s.

“We’re not able to retain the most experienced teachers,” he said.

Mr Jarman said experienced teachers leaving earlier exacerbated the issue for struggling graduates. “The loss of these experienced mentors, who often support younger teachers, is having a devastating knock-on effect,” he said.

Shadow education minister Liam Staltari said the figures in the report showed the State was leading to a teacher crisis.

“The figures released late last week confirm what we feared for some time, which is that we are on the cusp of a crisis in our teaching workforce in WA under this government,” he said.

“Our teachers are overworked and underappreciated and what we see is a record number of teachers being forced to leave the profession because they feel the lack of support from the government in complex and challenging classrooms.”