Australian Teacher Workforce Survey

The Australian Teacher Workforce Survey captures insights from teachers and leaders nationwide to build a clearer, evidence-informed picture of the profession — directly influencing education policy, strengthening workforce planning, and driving national reform.

The Teacher Survey asks you about:

• your wellbeing and job demands
• your hours – the time you spend teaching and preparing to teach
• your career intentions – whether you plan to stay in the profession
• your workforce arrangements – including your contractual arrangements and working hours

These questions combine to help us to build a clear picture of the teaching profession, and how it is evolving from year to year.

The survey is open to all registered teachers across Australia - no matter your career stage, role, or location, whatever setting you work in, or even if you're on leave. As long as you’re registered with your state’s teacher regulatory authority, we want to hear from you.

The survey runs between August to November every year, and the survey period differs in each state and territory.

The survey is administered by your state’s teacher regulatory authority. When the survey goes live in your state or territory, you'll receive an email from your teacher regulatory authority - they'll also send you several reminders. Your unique survey link will be in these emails.

If you’re in South Australia or Western Australia, you can also log in to your online portal to complete the survey directly.

It only takes 15 minutes on average to complete. It’s quick, easy to do, and can be integrated into your ongoing professional duties – such as staff meetings, curriculum days, or professional development sessions.

Your experience as a teacher changes with every year spent in (and out of) the classroom. Completing the survey annually helps us to better understand this journey and the support or interventions that may be needed as your teaching career progresses.

The data offers valuable, first-hand insights from teachers and leaders that help employers and policymakers better understand both the pressures and opportunities within the profession. This national data is used to inform policies and initiatives aimed at improving working conditions for teachers, now and into the future. The more teachers who contribute, the more powerful and harder to ignore the collective voice becomes. Sharing this data also helps teachers see how their experiences compare across the profession and highlights how their insights can influence meaningful change.

Importantly, this data plays a critical role in shaping the national conversation on issues like teacher workload. For example, it has supported the development of the National Teacher Workforce Action Plan, which includes a workload reduction fund to trial initiatives that cut down administrative tasks, streamline marking, and ease the burden of lesson planning.

Over time, the data provides a clearer picture of the challenges teachers face and allows tracking of long-term trends, such as shifts in working hours, helping employers assess what’s working, identify areas needing support, and drive evidence-informed reforms.

Your privacy is a top priority. All responses are kept strictly confidential. All data in the ATWD, including any data published in national reports, and the Data Portal, is de-identified, meaning your personal details are never shared – no personal information is included in the ATWD and individual teachers can never be identified. Your input contributes to improving teaching conditions and workforce planning, but it’s always done in a way that protects your identity and ensures your individual privacy is respected at every stage. For more information on how your privacy is protected, visit https://www.aitsl.edu.au/research/australian-teacher-workforce-data/data-security-and-privacy.