The State of Staff Wellbeing in Australian Schools: What Our National Report of 4,536 Staff Reveals

One in two school staff report feeling burnt out, and only 57% say their workplace has a positive impact on their mental health.  For years, my message to schools has remained consistent: this is not simply an individual coping problem that our staff needs to fix; it’s also a systemic one. 

Schools across Australia are doing the good work of implementing wellbeing initiatives aimed at improving morale, engagement and retention, yet most of these seem to only provide a temporary boost, or they completely miss the mark, sometimes frustrating staff further.

After three years of gathering data, I can tell you why. The initiatives aren’t failing because staff aren’t trying hard enough to be well or to manage a stressful role. They’re failing because most school wellbeing efforts place the responsibility solely on the staff, while the evidence points squarely at the workplace conditions too.

About the Report

Building on our 2025 Teacher Wellbeing Report, The State of Staff Wellbeing Across Australian Schools draws on data from our staff wellbeing survey for schools involving 4,536 staff across 58 school communities, collected between 2023 and 2026. It spans government, Catholic and independent schools; primary, secondary and specialist settings; and communities across the socio-educational spectrum, analysed by ICSEA band so that every school can find settings comparable to its own.

The report reviews the health of the elements that make up the staff wellbeing ecosystem; the daily experience of staff, and the leadership and organisational conditions that surround them. We take a nuanced, band-by-band approach, because national averages can conceal very different realities depending on expectations, context, the community served, and the complexities each school and band faces.

Nobody Works in the National Average

Every national figure in this report is useful when assessing teacher wellbeing in Australia, yet almost none of them will be experienced the same way by every school or staff member. The national average is a mathematical place, not a lived reality; no staff member actually works there.

Here’s what I mean. Catering for the complex and diverse needs of students ranks among the top stressors in every single school band. On the surface, it’s one national problem. But the reality varies. In lower-ICSEA primary schools, it’s a capability and preparation gap carried by early-career staff. In high-ICSEA settings, it’s rising needs colliding with high expectations, with staff requesting professional learning for diverse learners at nearly double the national rate. In specialist schools, it’s the work itself, chosen deliberately and too often under-resourced. It’s the same statistic, but a different problem requiring a different fix in each unique setting.

A school that responds to national headlines rather than its own data will spend money, time and goodwill on the wrong solution,  only to wonder why nothing shifts.

Prioritising Psychosocial Safety in Schools Over Individual Coping

Across every band, the staff-reported picture is consistent: The top stressors are known: long working hours and workload, administrative tasks, complex student needs, challenging behaviour, communication between leaders and staff, lack of planning time, and staff shortages.

And when staff are asked what would help, they don’t ask for more resilience training. They ask for reduced workload, better communication, genuine consultation in decisions that affect them, consistent whole-school approaches to behaviour, and flexible working options. In other words, they ask for the conditions of the work to change.

Focusing on personal coping strategies while these stressors go unaddressed is like throwing a lit match into a puddle of fuel. It’s why the report argues for a shift from individual coping to systemic, school-based reform, and why psychosocial safety in schools sits at its core.

Staff wellbeing is a joint responsibility, and there is a place for staff to focus on their personal wellbeing, coping and resilience, but it’s a hard feat when the workplace conditions require attention. There is a time and place for both, but the time to address the conditions is now.

Where the Psychosocial Risk Concentrates

Two settings stand out as high-risk environments regarding compounding psychosocial hazards in schools and the impact this has on personal and workplace wellbeing, and they are not the ones the headlines usually feature. Staff in lower-ICSEA secondary schools report the lowest morale, satisfaction and trust in the dataset, amid churning leadership and the highest staff-shortage stress in the country. And staff in specialist schools report occupational violence at more than three times the national average, while workload barely registers on their list; theirs is a safety and support story, not a workload one.

There’s an equity dimension here that education cannot keep stepping around; the schools serving the students with the greatest needs are carrying the greatest psychosocial risk, with the least slack to absorb it.

The Primary-Secondary Divide is Structural, Not Personal

One more pattern runs through every comparison: primary settings consistently report stronger workplace experiences, while secondary settings carry heavier organisational strain, longer hours, less say and less role clarity. It would be easy to read that as secondary staff being less well, but the data says otherwise. When it comes to personal wellbeing, secondary staff match and sometimes surpass the national average. The gap is in the conditions, not the people, and that makes it fixable.

What is a Psychosocial Hazard in a School Context?

A psychosocial hazard is any aspect of work design, systems or interactions that can cause psychological harm; think unmanageable workload, low job control, poor support, unclear roles, or exposure to aggression. Under Safe Work Australia’s Model Code of Practice for Managing Psychosocial Hazards at Work, employers, including schools, have a duty to identify, assess and control these hazards, just as they would physical ones. Victoria’s Occupational Health and Safety (Psychological Health) Regulations, in force since December 2025, have sharpened that duty further, and every jurisdiction is moving the same way. Managing psychosocial hazards and risks in schools is no longer a nice-to-have. It’s a legal obligation, and this report maps where those risks actually sit on average, setting by setting.

What’s inside the report

The full report includes three parts: 

1. Part One: Staff Experience: personal wellbeing, satisfaction, morale, culture, relationships and engagement.
2. Part Two: Leadership and Organisational Conditions: psychosocial hazards, the national stressor and initiative data, and snapshot summaries of every band.
3. Band Analysis Series: an in-depth, research-grounded analysis of each school type, from specialist settings to high-ICSEA secondary colleges, each ending with expert-recommended controls for that context.

It’s written for principals, deputy principals, wellbeing leaders and system leaders who are done with surface-level wellbeing and ready to lead the conditions.

Download the report

Download the Full Report: The complete publication. The national staff experience and organisational conditions analysis, every band snapshot, all seven band analyses, the discussion and full reference list. Best for system leaders, researchers, and anyone comparing across settings.

Download the Summary Edition: The national picture without the deep dives. Staff experience, organisational conditions, a one-page snapshot of every band, and the discussion. The fastest way to understand the state of the nation.

Download the Band 1H Report: For below-average ICSEA secondary schools and colleges (inclusive of settings with Primary-Secondary). The settings carrying the heaviest compounding load in the country, where leadership stability, communication and trust are the levers that move everything else.

Download the Band 0 Report: For specialist schools, including disability, complex needs and mental health settings. Where the story is not workload but the relational and safety load, and the communication, consultation and support systems that protect a deeply committed workforce.

Download the Band 1P Report: For below-average ICSEA primary schools. Where student needs and behaviour drive the stress profile, and consistency, capability and relational strength are the way through.

Download the Band 2P Report: For average ICSEA primary schools. The enhancement band: structurally sound settings whose staff are not asking to be rescued, but to grow.

Download the Band 3P Report: For above-average ICSEA primary schools. The strongest profile in the report, and its most instructive pressures: complex needs meeting high expectations, dense event-rich workload, and the weight of parent and community expectation.

Download the Band 2H Report: For average ICSEA secondary schools (inclusive of settings with Primary-Secondary). The national mirror: the core load of Australian secondary teaching, and the controls that generalise to almost every school.

Download the Band 3H Report: For above-average ICSEA secondary schools and colleges (inclusive of settings with Primary-Secondary). The workload band: long hours and high expectations carried inside structures short on voice, control and role clarity, and what it takes to change that.

Adrienne Hornby is a school wellbeing consultant and strategist and former school leader. She partners with schools across Australia to integrate psychosocial safety, staff wellbeing and whole-school strategy through the Well-Led Schools Partnership Program.