Schools across the Ballarat region are still advertising for staff even as students return for the new school year.
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A total of 18 teaching jobs, along with other teachers aide, education support and administration jobs were listed through the Department of Education's job site and other job sites on the weekend with several job ads posted as late as Friday.
Ballarat Clarendon College had the most jobs with full-time positions advertised last week for a commerce teacher, English teacher, history teacher, French teacher as well as an English, marketing, visual arts and communications teacher.
A spokesperson said the school was "staffed up and every class has a teacher" but was advertising to get ahead.
"We continue to grow, (with) close to 1900 students this year, and we're conscious of the usual cycle of teachers going on parental leave etc."
While vacancies do not necessarily mean students are returning to school without a teacher, as some ads relate to end of contract positions where a teacher is likely to be reappointed, Miners Rest Primary School principal Dale Power said the "unbelievable" teacher shortage was having a "huge impact" on the profession.
"The two (jobs) I have at the moment are existing roles so not necessarily new ones, but it's very difficult to find applicants for any jobs," he said.
"It's unbelievable. I used to always get 80 to 150 graduate applications for jobs when we were growing at Miners Rest and now I'm lucky to get two to five.
"During the year I will certainly have a family leave position and possibly a couple of others as well and it's a bit of heart-in-mouth sort of stuff to know who you might attract at that stage of the year."
There's a short term gain through bringing people in early and an advantage in giving them some experience but if we ultimately burn these people out and put them under significant pressure we might lose them in the medium to longer term
- Meredith Peace
Mr Power, who is on the board of the Victorian Principal's Association, said he knew of some more regional schools advertising jobs up to three times without receiving a single application.
According to Australian Education Union Victorian president Meredith Peace, some schools are being forced to cut specialist subjects or reduce extra support and tutoring for students so they could staff classrooms.
"Late last week there were close to 1000 vacancies across the state," she said.
Ms Peace said there were fewer vacancies in regional and rural schools compared to outer metropolitan growth areas, but acknowledged the challenges for non-metropolitan schools around staff recruitment.
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She welcomed government incentives and programs to help schools attract teachers but was concerned about the number of teaching students who are employed in the classroom while still studying.
"We are hearing from schools there are increasing numbers of people bring provided through the permission to teach mechanism (final year teaching students) to fill the gap," she said.
Among her fears was the risk of early burnout for the new teachers, being unable to offer them proper support and the risk of undermining teaching quality.
"We we know we have workload concern in our schools. There's a short term gain through bringing people in early and an advantage in giving them some experience but if we ultimately burn these people out and put them under significant pressure we might lose them in the medium to longer term."
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