In more than 10 years as a teacher, Emma* has never received as many offers for work as she has in the past two months.
"Hi … hoping to have a conversation with you about a position with us teaching English," one text said.
"Are you still in the market for a FT teaching job? Would love to hear back from you," said another.
She didn't even apply for the dozen or so jobs flooding in over text, phone and email.
Schools have gotten her details because her resume is on file with the education department.
"It's unheard of. I've never seen so many schools without teachers heading into term one," she said.
Thousands of Victorian students are returning to school on Tuesday without a permanent classroom teacher or subject teacher due to staffing shortages that are biting nationwide.
For many, it will mean a revolving door of relief teachers, cancelled subjects or being split up and placed with other classes, which research shows will have negative effects on their learning.
There are 800 teaching positions still being advertised on the Victorian public education website, but the vacancies are thought to be much higher — with many schools taking job ads down after being unable to fill them.
Olivia Hilton's eight-year-old son Freddie will be without an ongoing teacher at his inner-west public school when he starts grade 3, although the school has secured the same relief teacher to fill in for the first four weeks while they try to find someone.
"If they haven't got someone now I doubt it's going to be four weeks, it'll be a longer-term scenario," Ms Hilton said.
She said she was worried about the instability for Freddie, as he faced the prospect of several different teachers this year.
"I know it's a systemic issue rather than just the school my kids go to, but Freddie started school in COVID so he's had an inconsistent start to school in any case," Ms Hilton said.
"This is the first year where they do NAPLAN — it's a step up in curriculum and more is expected of them."
Student 'devastated' after subject axed due to shortage
The shortage has had big ramifications for Aidan* who is going into year 12 at a public school in Ballarat.
His parents received a phone call five days ago saying a teacher for his VET Engineering Studies subject could not be found, and the course would not run.
It means he may now have to do a four-year Systems Engineering apprenticeship when he leaves school – instead of one year – because he won't have the required credits.
"He is quite devastated," his mother Sharon told the ABC.
"He stayed in school because of this subject, because it was a really good pathway and he enjoyed it."
Aidan is now faced with choosing a new subject to replace it so he can get his VCE certificate, without having done that subject in year 11.
"He's absolutely disadvantaged," Sharon said.
"His father and I are very concerned, we don't know now if he'll lose interest and remain at school."
National exodus of overworked, unpaid staff
The teacher crisis has been brewing for some time and is not just affecting Victoria.
A recent Australian Education Union survey of thousands of public school teachers across Australia found more than a third were planning on leaving their jobs because of excessive workloads, student behaviour and low pay.
Educators have told the ABC not enough has been done to stop it.
The number of people enrolling to study teaching in Victoria has been declining since 2017 — although new enrolments received a boost this year due to the Victorian government offering free tertiary education to secondary-teaching students.
On top of there being no pipeline coming through, existing teachers are leaving.
In 2022, 6,500 or 8.9 per cent of ongoing teachers left the Victorian government system – compared to 4.9 per cent four years earlier.
The same year, a workplace agreement reducing the face-to-face class time of teachers meant another 2,000 had to be found to fill their workload.
Over the COVID years, 420 teachers were stood down for failing to get the vaccine. Although the vaccine mandate has since been lifted, it is not clear how many have returned.
All of this has come against a backdrop of teaching needs rising anyway, to keep pace with population growth.
Several teachers who have departed told the ABC the increased pressures of the job had led to their decision – and those pressures were exacerbated by not having enough staff.
One experienced teacher from western Victoria, who is re-training to go into consulting because of the extreme workload and stress, said she was devastated by what was happening.
"On the ground, classroom work is my passion. I love working with the kids, I love seeing them learn … but the system's only going to get tighter," she said.
"We've lost so many good staff in the past two years, we've lost experienced staff.
"Early career teachers have left and gone to other professions where at five o'clock their workday is done."
Suburban schools grappling with visa waits for new teachers
Principal of Tarneit P-9 College in Melbourne's west, Anne-Maree Kliman, believes the state will struggle for another five years to find teachers.
Her school has advertised 35 roles since the second part of last year – the majority of which received zero applicants.
"Five years ago, I would say we would have had about 100 applicants for one job," she says.
She has scrambled over that period and worked through the summer holidays to find 25 teachers – eight of them from overseas.
One from Canada only arrived in Australia on the weekend, to start work on Tuesday, after receiving his visa last week. She started the hiring process for him in July.
"So it's a long-winded process, and it's taking quite a bit of time," Ms Kliman said.
Six others are yet to receive their visas and approvals from the federal education department, so they will have to be filled by relief teachers until then.
In response to questions from the ABC about the delays, the federal Department of Education said it had identified several areas to improve migration processes to attract more overseas teachers and 3,572 permanent teaching visas were offered last financial year.
The school is still roughly 10 teachers short, so Ms Kliman and her assistant principals are taking on class loads to help fill the gaps, while relief teachers will also be brought in.
"It is overwhelming, [it's something] that I've never really dealt with in my 23 years of being a principal," she said.
Union calls for free degree policy to be expanded
The Australian Education Union's Victorian branch president Meredith Peace said she welcomed some of the moves from the state government such as giving fourth-year teaching students permission to teach and study at the same time, and free tertiary education for high-school teachers.
But she said it was not enough.
She would like to see free primary teaching degrees and payment for all teaching students on their placements to encourage them to stick with it.
She said the state government urgently needed to address its major problem – keeping the teachers it already had – by offering retention payments.
"If we continue to lose our existing staff … then we are going to face shortages for many years to come before we start to see any positives," she said.
"That's simply not acceptable for the kids who are at school right now for the staff who were trying to educate them properly."
A spokesperson for the Victorian Department of Education told the ABC that the pressures are being felt nationwide.
"Between 2022 and 2023, there was an increase of more than 16,500 students and an increase of 3,800 teachers registered to teach in primary and secondary schools, or a ratio of one additional teacher for every four additional students," the spokesperson said.
"This demonstrates the success of the more than $1.6 billion in school workforce initiatives invested by the Victorian government since 2019 to address the teaching workforce pressures being experienced by every jurisdiction across the country."
The federal Department of Education said the workforce shortages have been a decade in the making, with the number of young people entering the teaching industry in decline.
A National Teacher Workforce Action Plan was established in December 2022 to address the workforce shortages, with the Commonwealth investing $337 million over four years to implement the plan.
"There aren't many jobs more important than being a teacher, and we need to attract, train and retain people in the profession, including teachers from overseas," the spokesperson said.
"Australia does have a shortage of teachers that has been 10 years in the making, and it will take time to fix."
*Names have been changed.