'Handful' of teachers unlikely to ease 'drastic' shortage

As of midnight Friday the mandate, which required education staff to be triple vaccinated or have an exemption, ends in mainstream schools but will continue in specialist school settings.

Schools hoped the move could help ease the critical staff shortages but Victorian Principals Association president Andrew Dalgleish said it was a complex and widespread concern.

"The issue we're facing is not just in Victoria there's a shortage of teachers right across our nation. Even across the western Anglo world there's a general shortage of teachers in many cases."

Mr Dalgleish said he wasn't sure if the move would help locally and there was a lot of work at departmental level about how it could work with schools and universities.

He said a lot of teachers were registered with the Victorian Institute of Teaching but not working in the profession, opting to go into other careers or who were on family leave.

Brauer College principal Jane Boyle said while the mandate change had "very little impact" at the college it could help with staffing.

"There may be people in Warrnambool who are emergency teachers who because of the vaccination laws could not be employed. They may become available but I'm not aware of anybody."

Warrnambool-based Professional Teaching Solutions director Jodie Abbott said a "handful" of teachers might become available but most "bowed to the pressure and got the vaccination".

"There's definitely a handful around but I'm not sure it's going to make a huge impact because we're drastically short of teachers," Ms Abbott said.

She said a lot of its regular casual relief teachers who had been "on our books forever" had picked up jobs due the shortage.

"Next term we're the lowest we've ever been," Ms Abbott said.

"Before this, we used to fill 40 positions a day. Now we fill maybe eight because we don't have the staff."

She said there were requests for at least another five teachers daily that it couldn't fill.

"We just don't have them and I don't know how its going to improve. I think it's the pressure of COVID and the increasing pressure in general on teachers. Lots of people decided to retire early."

She said the shortage was Victoria-wide and agencies, including those in metro Melbourne, had met with the education department to try and come up with solutions.

"When had a meeting there were agencies saying there's hundreds of positions we can't fill a day."

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