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You have watched it happen. A capable, committed colleague hands in their notice, and everyone in the staffroom quietly understands why. It is the same feeling behind the Sunday-night dread that arrives before the week has even started.
This guide covers how many teachers are burned out, why they are leaving, and which of those drivers a school can actually change. It is written for teachers and school leaders, and it leans on AITSL, RAND, Gallup and OECD TALIS data rather than guesswork.
The quick answer
Teacher burnout is at record highs. Gallup finds 52% of US teachers feel burned out, the highest rate of any profession. In Australia, 39% of teachers intend to leave before retirement, and 92% of those leaving cite workload. Workload is the number-one driver in both countries, and it is the one schools can most change.
What percentage of teachers are burned out right now?
Around half. Gallup's national polling found that 52% of teachers reported feeling burned out at work always or very often, versus 30% of all other US workers, making teaching the most burned-out profession Gallup measured. K-12 education as a whole reported the highest burnout of any industry at 44%.
RAND's 2024 survey put teacher burnout higher still, with 60% reporting burnout and 59% reporting frequent job-related stress, roughly twice the rate of comparable working adults. These are not soft numbers. They come from large probability panels and repeated annual samples, and they have held near these levels for several years.
The short version: teaching is the most burned-out profession Gallup has measured.
Burnout is not spread evenly. In Gallup's burnout poll, female teachers reported a higher rate than male teachers, at 55% versus 44%. The RAND survey reporting shows the same pattern of stress concentrating among classroom teachers rather than the wider graduate workforce. The headline is consistent across sources: teacher burnout sits at or above 50%, and it is the highest of any occupation being tracked.
Why are teachers leaving the profession?
Teachers leave because the job has become unsustainable, not because they stop caring about students. In Australia, AITSL's Australian Teacher Workforce Data shows 39% of teachers intend to leave the profession before retirement, with 5% planning to go within a single year. Among those leaving, 92% cite workload and coping, 68% say teaching is too stressful or harms their wellbeing, 69% want better work-life balance, and 52% point to insufficient pay.
The pattern is a stack of pressures with workload at the top, not a single cause. Once teachers reach the point of planning an exit, the reasons they give are strikingly consistent across surveys and across countries.
The US picture rhymes. The RAND State of the American Teacher survey ranks workload, pay and student behaviour as the leading stressors pushing teachers out, with a base-pay gap of about $18,000 against comparable graduates. Australian data from AITSL's teacher wellbeing and career intentions release foregrounds workload, compliance and administrative burden. Different systems, same exit interview.
Is teacher workload really the number one cause of burnout?
Yes, and the data is unusually clear about it. In the AITSL survey, the most prevalent work-related stressors for Australian teachers rank like this:
- Workload: 58%, the single most prevalent stressor
- Dealing with students or parents: 42%
- Administrative duties: 40%
Among teachers actually intending to leave, 92% name workload and coping, the top-ranked reason by a wide margin. This is not one country's quirk. OECD TALIS 2024 found that 52% of lower-secondary teachers across member countries name administrative work as a source of stress, and workload appears as a cross-country driver everywhere the survey runs.
The short version: three independent bodies, three measurement designs, the same answer of workload.
Workload also matters because it is measurable and it is actionable. Pay is set by governments and enterprise agreements. Student behaviour is shaped by factors far outside a single classroom. Workload, by contrast, is made up of concrete tasks that a school can audit, redesign or remove. That makes it the driver worth focusing on first.
How many hours a week do teachers actually work?
More than most people assume, and far more than the timetable suggests. RAND found US teachers work an average of 53 hours a week, nine more than the 44 hours worked by comparable college-educated professionals. In Australia, three-quarters of full-time teachers report working 45 or more hours a week.
The gap between contract hours and real hours is the story. Teaching does not stop when the bell goes. Planning, marking, differentiating tasks, building resources and responding to families fill evenings, weekends and holidays. That unpaid, unseen tail is where the extra nine hours live, and it is a direct feeder into burnout and intention to leave.
The short version: teachers work nine unpaid hours a week the timetable never shows.
The reporting behind the RAND working-hours figures makes the point plainly: teachers are not working long weeks because they are slow, they are working long weeks because the volume of non-teaching production, especially resource creation and marking, keeps growing. Reducing those hours is not a perk. It targets the mechanism the evidence links most tightly to teachers walking away.
How much does it cost a school when a teacher quits?
Enough that retention is a budget line, not just a wellbeing one. The Learning Policy Institute estimates that replacing a single teacher costs, once recruitment, hiring and training are counted:
- About $11,860 in small districts
- About $16,450 in medium districts
- About $24,930 in large districts
Nationally, that adds up to billions of dollars a year. Those figures do not capture the learning loss when a class cycles through casual relief teachers, nor the load that departures dump onto the colleagues who stay. Turnover is expensive in cash and in capacity, and it compounds, because the teachers left behind absorb the extra work that drives the next round of exits.
The staffing backdrop makes the cost sharper. NCES data shows about 8% of US public school teachers left the profession in a recent year, 45% of schools reported feeling understaffed entering the 2023-24 year, and 86% reported difficulty hiring teachers. When replacements are hard to find, every avoidable departure costs more than the Learning Policy Institute's per-teacher figure suggests.
Which drivers of teacher burnout can schools actually change?
Not all of them, which is exactly why targeting matters. Pay sits at system level and moves through governments and unions. Student behaviour is only partly within a school's control. But workload, and specifically the administrative and resource-creation slice of it, is highly modifiable and it ranks number one in AU, US and OECD data.
That is the rare case where the biggest driver is also the most changeable. A school cannot rewrite the pay scale this term, but it can decide how many hours its teachers spend building worksheets, differentiating tasks and marking, and it can start this week. The table below sets out each driver, the evidence behind it, and how much of it a single school can actually move.
| Driver | Supporting statistic | Country / source | Modifiable by schools? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Workload and working hours | 92% of AU teachers intending to leave cite workload and coping; three-quarters of full-time teachers work 45+ hrs/week. US teachers average 53 hrs/week vs 44 for comparable graduates | AU: AITSL/ATWD 2023; US: RAND 2024 | Yes (highly modifiable) |
| Administrative / non-teaching work | 52% of teachers across the OECD name administrative work as a source of stress; it is a top-ranked US stressor and cited by 63% of leaving AU teachers | OECD TALIS 2024; AITSL 2023; RAND 2024 | Yes (highly modifiable) |
| Managing student behaviour | Managing student behaviour is a job demand for 80% of AU teachers and a top US stressor (near 50% of teachers, 67% of early-career) | AITSL 2023; RAND 2024 | Partly |
| Pay / salary | US teachers earn ~$18,000 less than comparable graduates ($70k vs $88k); 52% of leaving AU teachers cite insufficient pay | RAND 2024; AITSL 2023 | Partly (system-level) |
| Wellbeing / work-life balance | 68% of leaving AU teachers say teaching is too stressful or harms their wellbeing; 69% seek better work-life balance | AITSL 2023 | Partly |
| Lack of leadership / administrative support | Principals' lack of support is cited as a leading reason US educators leave; unsupported new teachers leave at more than twice the rate | Learning Policy Institute | Yes |
Percentages are as reported by each primary source and are not additive across rows. Values are drawn from AITSL Australian Teacher Workforce Data (2023), RAND State of the American Teacher (2024), OECD TALIS 2024 and the Learning Policy Institute.
A large share of those 53-hour US weeks and 45-plus-hour Australian weeks goes on producing teaching materials outside contract time. That is the work that has become automatable. tutero.ai, the AI teaching platform, generates curriculum-aligned worksheets, lesson resources and differentiated tasks in minutes, and it can build the same lesson at three levels in one step. It does not fix pay and it does not manage a hard class, but it removes the single most modifiable driver in the data, and it is free for teachers.
What actually helps prevent teacher burnout?
Two things the evidence keeps returning to: reducing workload and improving leadership support. The Learning Policy Institute finds that principals' lack of support is a leading reason educators leave, and that unsupported new teachers leave at more than twice the rate of well-supported peers.
Alongside that, protecting planning time and cutting low-value administrative and resource-creation load addresses the driver teachers themselves name most. Wellbeing programmes and yoga at lunch do not move a 53-hour week. Giving teachers back hours does. The interventions that work are the ones that shrink the actual task list, then back them with instructional leadership that shields teachers from unnecessary compliance work.
The practical version looks like this:
- Audit the non-teaching task list and delete or automate whatever does not touch student learning.
- Ring-fence planning time so it cannot be eaten by meetings and cover.
- Give teachers tools that produce curriculum-aligned resources fast, so building materials stops eating evenings.
- Train and back middle leaders to run manageable workloads, since leadership support is itself a retention lever.
None of this is a silver bullet. But the data points at one lever a school can pull without waiting for a pay review or a behaviour reform, and that lever is workload. Reclaiming resource-creation time is where the modifiable evidence and the daily reality of the job overlap.
Want to give your teachers back the hours the data says push them toward the exit? Create your first curriculum-aligned resource free at tutero.ai. It is free for teachers, and it targets the one burnout driver a school can change this term.
Of every burnout driver in the data, workload is the one schools can most change, and it ranks number one in both Australia and the US.
Of every burnout driver in the data, workload is the one schools can most change, and it ranks number one in both Australia and the US.
You have watched it happen. A capable, committed colleague hands in their notice, and everyone in the staffroom quietly understands why. It is the same feeling behind the Sunday-night dread that arrives before the week has even started.
This guide covers how many teachers are burned out, why they are leaving, and which of those drivers a school can actually change. It is written for teachers and school leaders, and it leans on AITSL, RAND, Gallup and OECD TALIS data rather than guesswork.
The quick answer
Teacher burnout is at record highs. Gallup finds 52% of US teachers feel burned out, the highest rate of any profession. In Australia, 39% of teachers intend to leave before retirement, and 92% of those leaving cite workload. Workload is the number-one driver in both countries, and it is the one schools can most change.
What percentage of teachers are burned out right now?
Around half. Gallup's national polling found that 52% of teachers reported feeling burned out at work always or very often, versus 30% of all other US workers, making teaching the most burned-out profession Gallup measured. K-12 education as a whole reported the highest burnout of any industry at 44%.
RAND's 2024 survey put teacher burnout higher still, with 60% reporting burnout and 59% reporting frequent job-related stress, roughly twice the rate of comparable working adults. These are not soft numbers. They come from large probability panels and repeated annual samples, and they have held near these levels for several years.
The short version: teaching is the most burned-out profession Gallup has measured.
Burnout is not spread evenly. In Gallup's burnout poll, female teachers reported a higher rate than male teachers, at 55% versus 44%. The RAND survey reporting shows the same pattern of stress concentrating among classroom teachers rather than the wider graduate workforce. The headline is consistent across sources: teacher burnout sits at or above 50%, and it is the highest of any occupation being tracked.
Why are teachers leaving the profession?
Teachers leave because the job has become unsustainable, not because they stop caring about students. In Australia, AITSL's Australian Teacher Workforce Data shows 39% of teachers intend to leave the profession before retirement, with 5% planning to go within a single year. Among those leaving, 92% cite workload and coping, 68% say teaching is too stressful or harms their wellbeing, 69% want better work-life balance, and 52% point to insufficient pay.
The pattern is a stack of pressures with workload at the top, not a single cause. Once teachers reach the point of planning an exit, the reasons they give are strikingly consistent across surveys and across countries.
The US picture rhymes. The RAND State of the American Teacher survey ranks workload, pay and student behaviour as the leading stressors pushing teachers out, with a base-pay gap of about $18,000 against comparable graduates. Australian data from AITSL's teacher wellbeing and career intentions release foregrounds workload, compliance and administrative burden. Different systems, same exit interview.
Is teacher workload really the number one cause of burnout?
Yes, and the data is unusually clear about it. In the AITSL survey, the most prevalent work-related stressors for Australian teachers rank like this:
- Workload: 58%, the single most prevalent stressor
- Dealing with students or parents: 42%
- Administrative duties: 40%
Among teachers actually intending to leave, 92% name workload and coping, the top-ranked reason by a wide margin. This is not one country's quirk. OECD TALIS 2024 found that 52% of lower-secondary teachers across member countries name administrative work as a source of stress, and workload appears as a cross-country driver everywhere the survey runs.
The short version: three independent bodies, three measurement designs, the same answer of workload.
Workload also matters because it is measurable and it is actionable. Pay is set by governments and enterprise agreements. Student behaviour is shaped by factors far outside a single classroom. Workload, by contrast, is made up of concrete tasks that a school can audit, redesign or remove. That makes it the driver worth focusing on first.
How many hours a week do teachers actually work?
More than most people assume, and far more than the timetable suggests. RAND found US teachers work an average of 53 hours a week, nine more than the 44 hours worked by comparable college-educated professionals. In Australia, three-quarters of full-time teachers report working 45 or more hours a week.
The gap between contract hours and real hours is the story. Teaching does not stop when the bell goes. Planning, marking, differentiating tasks, building resources and responding to families fill evenings, weekends and holidays. That unpaid, unseen tail is where the extra nine hours live, and it is a direct feeder into burnout and intention to leave.
The short version: teachers work nine unpaid hours a week the timetable never shows.
The reporting behind the RAND working-hours figures makes the point plainly: teachers are not working long weeks because they are slow, they are working long weeks because the volume of non-teaching production, especially resource creation and marking, keeps growing. Reducing those hours is not a perk. It targets the mechanism the evidence links most tightly to teachers walking away.
How much does it cost a school when a teacher quits?
Enough that retention is a budget line, not just a wellbeing one. The Learning Policy Institute estimates that replacing a single teacher costs, once recruitment, hiring and training are counted:
- About $11,860 in small districts
- About $16,450 in medium districts
- About $24,930 in large districts
Nationally, that adds up to billions of dollars a year. Those figures do not capture the learning loss when a class cycles through casual relief teachers, nor the load that departures dump onto the colleagues who stay. Turnover is expensive in cash and in capacity, and it compounds, because the teachers left behind absorb the extra work that drives the next round of exits.
The staffing backdrop makes the cost sharper. NCES data shows about 8% of US public school teachers left the profession in a recent year, 45% of schools reported feeling understaffed entering the 2023-24 year, and 86% reported difficulty hiring teachers. When replacements are hard to find, every avoidable departure costs more than the Learning Policy Institute's per-teacher figure suggests.
Which drivers of teacher burnout can schools actually change?
Not all of them, which is exactly why targeting matters. Pay sits at system level and moves through governments and unions. Student behaviour is only partly within a school's control. But workload, and specifically the administrative and resource-creation slice of it, is highly modifiable and it ranks number one in AU, US and OECD data.
That is the rare case where the biggest driver is also the most changeable. A school cannot rewrite the pay scale this term, but it can decide how many hours its teachers spend building worksheets, differentiating tasks and marking, and it can start this week. The table below sets out each driver, the evidence behind it, and how much of it a single school can actually move.
| Driver | Supporting statistic | Country / source | Modifiable by schools? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Workload and working hours | 92% of AU teachers intending to leave cite workload and coping; three-quarters of full-time teachers work 45+ hrs/week. US teachers average 53 hrs/week vs 44 for comparable graduates | AU: AITSL/ATWD 2023; US: RAND 2024 | Yes (highly modifiable) |
| Administrative / non-teaching work | 52% of teachers across the OECD name administrative work as a source of stress; it is a top-ranked US stressor and cited by 63% of leaving AU teachers | OECD TALIS 2024; AITSL 2023; RAND 2024 | Yes (highly modifiable) |
| Managing student behaviour | Managing student behaviour is a job demand for 80% of AU teachers and a top US stressor (near 50% of teachers, 67% of early-career) | AITSL 2023; RAND 2024 | Partly |
| Pay / salary | US teachers earn ~$18,000 less than comparable graduates ($70k vs $88k); 52% of leaving AU teachers cite insufficient pay | RAND 2024; AITSL 2023 | Partly (system-level) |
| Wellbeing / work-life balance | 68% of leaving AU teachers say teaching is too stressful or harms their wellbeing; 69% seek better work-life balance | AITSL 2023 | Partly |
| Lack of leadership / administrative support | Principals' lack of support is cited as a leading reason US educators leave; unsupported new teachers leave at more than twice the rate | Learning Policy Institute | Yes |
Percentages are as reported by each primary source and are not additive across rows. Values are drawn from AITSL Australian Teacher Workforce Data (2023), RAND State of the American Teacher (2024), OECD TALIS 2024 and the Learning Policy Institute.
A large share of those 53-hour US weeks and 45-plus-hour Australian weeks goes on producing teaching materials outside contract time. That is the work that has become automatable. tutero.ai, the AI teaching platform, generates curriculum-aligned worksheets, lesson resources and differentiated tasks in minutes, and it can build the same lesson at three levels in one step. It does not fix pay and it does not manage a hard class, but it removes the single most modifiable driver in the data, and it is free for teachers.
What actually helps prevent teacher burnout?
Two things the evidence keeps returning to: reducing workload and improving leadership support. The Learning Policy Institute finds that principals' lack of support is a leading reason educators leave, and that unsupported new teachers leave at more than twice the rate of well-supported peers.
Alongside that, protecting planning time and cutting low-value administrative and resource-creation load addresses the driver teachers themselves name most. Wellbeing programmes and yoga at lunch do not move a 53-hour week. Giving teachers back hours does. The interventions that work are the ones that shrink the actual task list, then back them with instructional leadership that shields teachers from unnecessary compliance work.
The practical version looks like this:
- Audit the non-teaching task list and delete or automate whatever does not touch student learning.
- Ring-fence planning time so it cannot be eaten by meetings and cover.
- Give teachers tools that produce curriculum-aligned resources fast, so building materials stops eating evenings.
- Train and back middle leaders to run manageable workloads, since leadership support is itself a retention lever.
None of this is a silver bullet. But the data points at one lever a school can pull without waiting for a pay review or a behaviour reform, and that lever is workload. Reclaiming resource-creation time is where the modifiable evidence and the daily reality of the job overlap.
Want to give your teachers back the hours the data says push them toward the exit? Create your first curriculum-aligned resource free at tutero.ai. It is free for teachers, and it targets the one burnout driver a school can change this term.
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Of every burnout driver in the data, workload is the one schools can most change, and it ranks number one in both Australia and the US.
Of every burnout driver in the data, workload is the one schools can most change, and it ranks number one in both Australia and the US.
Of every burnout driver in the data, workload is the one schools can most change, and it ranks number one in both Australia and the US.
A large share of a 53-hour week is spent outside contract hours making worksheets, differentiating tasks and marking.
You have watched it happen. A capable, committed colleague hands in their notice, and everyone in the staffroom quietly understands why. It is the same feeling behind the Sunday-night dread that arrives before the week has even started.
This guide covers how many teachers are burned out, why they are leaving, and which of those drivers a school can actually change. It is written for teachers and school leaders, and it leans on AITSL, RAND, Gallup and OECD TALIS data rather than guesswork.
The quick answer
Teacher burnout is at record highs. Gallup finds 52% of US teachers feel burned out, the highest rate of any profession. In Australia, 39% of teachers intend to leave before retirement, and 92% of those leaving cite workload. Workload is the number-one driver in both countries, and it is the one schools can most change.
What percentage of teachers are burned out right now?
Around half. Gallup's national polling found that 52% of teachers reported feeling burned out at work always or very often, versus 30% of all other US workers, making teaching the most burned-out profession Gallup measured. K-12 education as a whole reported the highest burnout of any industry at 44%.
RAND's 2024 survey put teacher burnout higher still, with 60% reporting burnout and 59% reporting frequent job-related stress, roughly twice the rate of comparable working adults. These are not soft numbers. They come from large probability panels and repeated annual samples, and they have held near these levels for several years.
The short version: teaching is the most burned-out profession Gallup has measured.
Burnout is not spread evenly. In Gallup's burnout poll, female teachers reported a higher rate than male teachers, at 55% versus 44%. The RAND survey reporting shows the same pattern of stress concentrating among classroom teachers rather than the wider graduate workforce. The headline is consistent across sources: teacher burnout sits at or above 50%, and it is the highest of any occupation being tracked.
Why are teachers leaving the profession?
Teachers leave because the job has become unsustainable, not because they stop caring about students. In Australia, AITSL's Australian Teacher Workforce Data shows 39% of teachers intend to leave the profession before retirement, with 5% planning to go within a single year. Among those leaving, 92% cite workload and coping, 68% say teaching is too stressful or harms their wellbeing, 69% want better work-life balance, and 52% point to insufficient pay.
The pattern is a stack of pressures with workload at the top, not a single cause. Once teachers reach the point of planning an exit, the reasons they give are strikingly consistent across surveys and across countries.
The US picture rhymes. The RAND State of the American Teacher survey ranks workload, pay and student behaviour as the leading stressors pushing teachers out, with a base-pay gap of about $18,000 against comparable graduates. Australian data from AITSL's teacher wellbeing and career intentions release foregrounds workload, compliance and administrative burden. Different systems, same exit interview.
Is teacher workload really the number one cause of burnout?
Yes, and the data is unusually clear about it. In the AITSL survey, the most prevalent work-related stressors for Australian teachers rank like this:
- Workload: 58%, the single most prevalent stressor
- Dealing with students or parents: 42%
- Administrative duties: 40%
Among teachers actually intending to leave, 92% name workload and coping, the top-ranked reason by a wide margin. This is not one country's quirk. OECD TALIS 2024 found that 52% of lower-secondary teachers across member countries name administrative work as a source of stress, and workload appears as a cross-country driver everywhere the survey runs.
The short version: three independent bodies, three measurement designs, the same answer of workload.
Workload also matters because it is measurable and it is actionable. Pay is set by governments and enterprise agreements. Student behaviour is shaped by factors far outside a single classroom. Workload, by contrast, is made up of concrete tasks that a school can audit, redesign or remove. That makes it the driver worth focusing on first.
How many hours a week do teachers actually work?
More than most people assume, and far more than the timetable suggests. RAND found US teachers work an average of 53 hours a week, nine more than the 44 hours worked by comparable college-educated professionals. In Australia, three-quarters of full-time teachers report working 45 or more hours a week.
The gap between contract hours and real hours is the story. Teaching does not stop when the bell goes. Planning, marking, differentiating tasks, building resources and responding to families fill evenings, weekends and holidays. That unpaid, unseen tail is where the extra nine hours live, and it is a direct feeder into burnout and intention to leave.
The short version: teachers work nine unpaid hours a week the timetable never shows.
The reporting behind the RAND working-hours figures makes the point plainly: teachers are not working long weeks because they are slow, they are working long weeks because the volume of non-teaching production, especially resource creation and marking, keeps growing. Reducing those hours is not a perk. It targets the mechanism the evidence links most tightly to teachers walking away.
How much does it cost a school when a teacher quits?
Enough that retention is a budget line, not just a wellbeing one. The Learning Policy Institute estimates that replacing a single teacher costs, once recruitment, hiring and training are counted:
- About $11,860 in small districts
- About $16,450 in medium districts
- About $24,930 in large districts
Nationally, that adds up to billions of dollars a year. Those figures do not capture the learning loss when a class cycles through casual relief teachers, nor the load that departures dump onto the colleagues who stay. Turnover is expensive in cash and in capacity, and it compounds, because the teachers left behind absorb the extra work that drives the next round of exits.
The staffing backdrop makes the cost sharper. NCES data shows about 8% of US public school teachers left the profession in a recent year, 45% of schools reported feeling understaffed entering the 2023-24 year, and 86% reported difficulty hiring teachers. When replacements are hard to find, every avoidable departure costs more than the Learning Policy Institute's per-teacher figure suggests.
Which drivers of teacher burnout can schools actually change?
Not all of them, which is exactly why targeting matters. Pay sits at system level and moves through governments and unions. Student behaviour is only partly within a school's control. But workload, and specifically the administrative and resource-creation slice of it, is highly modifiable and it ranks number one in AU, US and OECD data.
That is the rare case where the biggest driver is also the most changeable. A school cannot rewrite the pay scale this term, but it can decide how many hours its teachers spend building worksheets, differentiating tasks and marking, and it can start this week. The table below sets out each driver, the evidence behind it, and how much of it a single school can actually move.
| Driver | Supporting statistic | Country / source | Modifiable by schools? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Workload and working hours | 92% of AU teachers intending to leave cite workload and coping; three-quarters of full-time teachers work 45+ hrs/week. US teachers average 53 hrs/week vs 44 for comparable graduates | AU: AITSL/ATWD 2023; US: RAND 2024 | Yes (highly modifiable) |
| Administrative / non-teaching work | 52% of teachers across the OECD name administrative work as a source of stress; it is a top-ranked US stressor and cited by 63% of leaving AU teachers | OECD TALIS 2024; AITSL 2023; RAND 2024 | Yes (highly modifiable) |
| Managing student behaviour | Managing student behaviour is a job demand for 80% of AU teachers and a top US stressor (near 50% of teachers, 67% of early-career) | AITSL 2023; RAND 2024 | Partly |
| Pay / salary | US teachers earn ~$18,000 less than comparable graduates ($70k vs $88k); 52% of leaving AU teachers cite insufficient pay | RAND 2024; AITSL 2023 | Partly (system-level) |
| Wellbeing / work-life balance | 68% of leaving AU teachers say teaching is too stressful or harms their wellbeing; 69% seek better work-life balance | AITSL 2023 | Partly |
| Lack of leadership / administrative support | Principals' lack of support is cited as a leading reason US educators leave; unsupported new teachers leave at more than twice the rate | Learning Policy Institute | Yes |
Percentages are as reported by each primary source and are not additive across rows. Values are drawn from AITSL Australian Teacher Workforce Data (2023), RAND State of the American Teacher (2024), OECD TALIS 2024 and the Learning Policy Institute.
A large share of those 53-hour US weeks and 45-plus-hour Australian weeks goes on producing teaching materials outside contract time. That is the work that has become automatable. tutero.ai, the AI teaching platform, generates curriculum-aligned worksheets, lesson resources and differentiated tasks in minutes, and it can build the same lesson at three levels in one step. It does not fix pay and it does not manage a hard class, but it removes the single most modifiable driver in the data, and it is free for teachers.
What actually helps prevent teacher burnout?
Two things the evidence keeps returning to: reducing workload and improving leadership support. The Learning Policy Institute finds that principals' lack of support is a leading reason educators leave, and that unsupported new teachers leave at more than twice the rate of well-supported peers.
Alongside that, protecting planning time and cutting low-value administrative and resource-creation load addresses the driver teachers themselves name most. Wellbeing programmes and yoga at lunch do not move a 53-hour week. Giving teachers back hours does. The interventions that work are the ones that shrink the actual task list, then back them with instructional leadership that shields teachers from unnecessary compliance work.
The practical version looks like this:
- Audit the non-teaching task list and delete or automate whatever does not touch student learning.
- Ring-fence planning time so it cannot be eaten by meetings and cover.
- Give teachers tools that produce curriculum-aligned resources fast, so building materials stops eating evenings.
- Train and back middle leaders to run manageable workloads, since leadership support is itself a retention lever.
None of this is a silver bullet. But the data points at one lever a school can pull without waiting for a pay review or a behaviour reform, and that lever is workload. Reclaiming resource-creation time is where the modifiable evidence and the daily reality of the job overlap.
Want to give your teachers back the hours the data says push them toward the exit? Create your first curriculum-aligned resource free at tutero.ai. It is free for teachers, and it targets the one burnout driver a school can change this term.
Of every burnout driver in the data, workload is the one schools can most change, and it ranks number one in both Australia and the US.
A large share of a 53-hour week is spent outside contract hours making worksheets, differentiating tasks and marking.
Gallup puts teacher burnout at 52%, the highest of any US profession, versus 30% for other workers. RAND's 2024 survey found 60% of teachers reported burnout and 59% reported frequent job stress, roughly double the rate of comparable working adults. Rates run higher for women teachers, at 55% versus 44% for men.
AITSL's Australian Teacher Workforce Data shows 39% of teachers intend to leave before retirement. Among those leaving, 92% cite workload and coping, 68% say teaching is too stressful or harms their wellbeing, 69% want better work-life balance, and 52% point to insufficient pay. Workload is the consistently top-ranked reason, well ahead of the rest.
US teachers average 53 hours a week, nine more than comparable college-educated workers on 44, according to RAND. In Australia, three-quarters of full-time teachers work 45 or more hours a week. Much of that time falls outside contract hours and goes on planning, marking and building lesson resources rather than teaching itself.
The Learning Policy Institute estimates replacing one teacher costs about $11,860 in small districts, $16,450 in medium districts and $24,930 in large districts. Those figures cover recruitment, hiring and training, and do not count the learning disruption for students who lose a teacher mid-year.
Pay sits mostly at system level and student behaviour is only partly within reach, but workload, especially administrative and resource-creation work, is the most modifiable driver, and it ranks number one in Australian, US and OECD data. Protecting planning time, cutting low-value admin and reducing the hours spent building resources are the levers a single school can pull now.
The evidence points that way. Workload is the top-cited reason teachers give for leaving in both AITSL and RAND surveys, so reducing it targets the driver teachers themselves name most. The Learning Policy Institute also finds that leadership support and manageable working conditions lower attrition, with unsupported new teachers leaving at more than twice the rate of well-supported peers.
Hoping to improve confidence & grades?
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