After working as a statistician, Luke Doyle decided to change careers and become a secondary mathematics teacher.
Mr Doyle joined Teach For Australia’s 2023 cohort and relocated from Melbourne to Dubbo to teach Mathematics at St John’s College. The employment-based pathway allowed him to study towards his teaching qualification while working as a paid teacher.
The OECD’s Education at a Glance 2026 report found that 16.9 per cent of Australia’s lower secondary teachers were second-career teachers in 2024, compared with 8.4 per cent across the OECD.
The OECD defines second-career teachers as those who enter teaching after at least 10 years of work experience outside education.
In a foreword to the report, Mathias Cormann, OECD Secretary-General, identifies widening entry into teaching as one response to teacher workforce pressures.
“Widening entry into the profession is a further lever, alongside more productive use of existing staff,” Mr Cormann says. “Well-designed pathways for second-career teachers can expand the recruitment pool and bring valuable professional experience into schools.”
“In Australia and the Netherlands, where over 15 per cent of teachers are second-career entrants, flexible pathways recognise prior experience and combine training with employment,” he says.
The OECD reports that more than half of the countries and economies with available data have introduced structured pathways for second-career teachers. These include employment-based training, accelerated pedagogical preparation, recognition of prior professional experience and alternative certification arrangements.
Australia has developed several pathways of this kind, including the Australian Government’s High Achieving Teachers Program, which supports people from diverse professional backgrounds to enter teaching while completing an accredited teaching qualification.
Teach For Australia is among the organisations involved in employment-based pathways. Its Leadership Development Program allows participants to work in schools while completing a Master of Teaching.
The OECD says second-career teachers can bring professional experience from other sectors into schools and identifies them as an important recruitment pool in countries experiencing teacher shortages.
The report also examines how education systems can make more effective use of their existing workforce.
It identifies technology, specialised support staff and new ways of organising teaching as potential approaches that could allow teachers to spend more time on tasks where their expertise has the greatest value.
Australian teachers have relatively high statutory teaching loads compared with the OECD average. Primary teachers had 857 hours of annual teaching time in 2025, compared with an OECD average of 770 hours. For lower secondary teachers, the figures were 841 hours in Australia compared with 710 hours across the OECD.
The OECD also found that Australia’s primary teacher workforce increased by 17 per cent between 2015 and 2024, while primary student numbers increased by 6 per cent. Across the OECD, primary teacher numbers increased by 13 per cent and student numbers by 2 per cent over the same period.
The report identifies teacher shortages as a continuing challenge and examines measures including widening entry into the profession, improving working conditions and making more productive use of existing staff.
More reading:
Teacher numbers outpace student growth in Australia: OECD report