But Mullaly says the numbers have recovered by “several thousand” as the union prepares for pay talks with the state government in coming months, and that the state’s teachers are fired up, pointing to the large number of educators wanting a say on the wage claim to be delivered to Education Minister Ben Carroll in late July. Victorian graduate teachers are the worst paid in the country, earning $13,000 less than the country’s best-paid graduates in the Northern Territory and $8700 less than those in NSW. Mullaly says a “significant pay rise” is needed just to achieve parity. “We think Victorian teachers are worth at least as much as a similar teacher in New South Wales, and by 2026 we need a 13 to 14 per cent pay increase, just to get to them,” he says. But the crisis in the profession is not just about the money; chronic staff shortages in state schools have forced teachers to take up increasingly heavy workloads.