Inspiration won't fix Australia's teacher crisis without workplace reform

In October 2023, the Australian government launched a $10 million campaign called "Be That Teacher," designed to celebrate the profession and persuade more people to enter it. The initiative was part of a broader National Teacher Workforce Action Plan aimed at raising teaching's status and addressing a deepening shortage of educators. But new research from Curtin University, published in the Journal of Education Policy, suggests the campaign may have missed the point entirely—and in doing so, may have made the problem worse.

Dr. Saul Karnovsky and his team at Curtin's School of Education analyzed government materials spanning four years, from January 2022 through December 2025. They examined policy documents, ministerial speeches, interviews, media releases, and archived campaign content. What they found was a consistent pattern: the campaign presented teaching as emotionally fulfilling and morally significant work, full of stories about individual educators transforming students' lives. The message was clear—become a teacher, change the world, be extraordinary. But nowhere in that narrative were the conditions that actually drive teachers out of the profession.

Karnovsky put it plainly: "The problem arises when inspiration starts becoming a policy response to a workforce crisis." Governments, he explained, were essentially telling prospective teachers that the work was meaningful and that they could change lives. Those things might be true. But they don't address excessive workloads, occupational stress, administrative demands, or the other structural problems that research has consistently identified as reasons teachers leave. The campaign, in other words, was selling the dream while ignoring the reality.

The numbers tell a stark story. In surveys of Australian teachers, 46 percent reported considering leaving their jobs within twelve months because of workload and stress. A separate survey of more than 22,000 teachers found that 86 percent described their work as emotionally demanding, and 58 percent attributed their stress directly to excessive workload. These are not small margins. They represent a profession in crisis, hemorrhaging experienced educators.

What troubles Karnovsky most is the implicit message embedded in campaigns like "Be That Teacher." When governments continually frame teaching as a calling or a vocation—as an opportunity to make a difference—they risk reinforcing a dangerous expectation: that teachers should tolerate poor conditions because their work is socially important. The extraordinary individual teacher who overcomes difficult circumstances becomes the model, the ideal. But teaching, Karnovsky argues, is not sustained by extraordinary individuals continually sacrificing themselves. It is sustained by workplaces that provide time, resources, professional support, and conditions that allow teachers to do their jobs well.

The research calls for a fundamental shift in how policymakers approach the teacher shortage. Recruitment campaigns might help counter negative perceptions, but they cannot substitute for actually improving the profession. If Australia wants people to become teachers, better stories might help. But if the government wants those people to remain teachers a decade or two later, then workload, resourcing, professional autonomy, safety, and working conditions must be part of the conversation. Teacher well-being, the paper argues, should not be treated as an individual educator's responsibility to manage. It is an institutional problem requiring institutional solutions.

The gap between what the "Be That Teacher" campaign offered and what teachers actually need has become impossible to ignore. Inspiration alone will not fill classrooms or keep experienced educators in the profession. Until the conditions of teaching change—until teachers have reasonable workloads, adequate resources, and genuine professional autonomy—no amount of celebratory messaging will reverse the exodus.