From kids routinely spending most of a school day in a quadrangle for lack of teachers, to assistant principals spending dozens of hours a week unpaid overtime, the education system is in "crisis".
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That's the message shared by hundreds of educators who walked off the job in Tamworth this week.
And this week's 24-hour strike by teachers New England North West on Wednesday won't be the last, according to union representatives and educators who said they were fed-up with pay cuts and overwork.
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Oxley High School teacher Kia Stevenson said the strike action was about the future of public education.
"I think most people just think we're striking for more money. That's not the case at all. That's not the case at all. We're striking for better conditions, more teachers, so that we can do the best for these kids," Ms Stevenson said.
"For me personally, and I would hazard a guess for most of us, it's got nothing to do with with our personal circumstances. It's very much a collective push."
As an assistant principal (AP), teacher Wendy Morse said she routinely worked dozens of hours more than she was paid for.
As a teaching AP at five small schools, she has to fit her responsibilities as an education leader into her two hours' of planning time budgeted per week for planning, the same number as a teacher.
Individual schools now take far more responsibility for hiring and firing and budgetary administration, but teacher leaders often have no additional time in which to do it, she said.
"An AP position is still two hours a week [off class] and it hasn't changed in 20 years," she said.
"I've been teaching 34 years and this is the first time I'm like - I want to give up, I'm done.
"To me it's about the working conditions."
'Possibly more strikes'
Public school teachers at hundreds of schools across NSW took their second day of strike action in six months on Wednesday, with the Teachers Federation calling on the state government to offer wage increases of between five and 7.5 per cent, plus two additional planning hours for teachers like Ms Morse.
The wage demands would require an end to the government's decade-old legislated wage cap of 2.5 per cent on increasing public servant wages year-on-year.
Region organiser Katie Sullivan said the union's "more than thanks" campaign wasn't going to stop until teachers got change.
She said the next step is "possibly more strikes".
Speaking as a teacher and a unionist, she'd be willing to go on strike again, or even to strike for multiple days in a row, she said.
Ms Sullivan recently worked as a teaching principal at a small school and she said the situation for education leaders is "dire".
"We have students that don't have classes, they're sitting in a quadrangle for up to three periods a day because they don't have the teachers to cover them," she said.
"Out of a five-period day."
Worse, Gunnedah-based minister for education Sarah Mitchell "refuses" to meet with local teachers, at local Teachers Federation meetings, Ms Sullivan said.
Statewide, the union has claimed the government has also refused to negotiate, instead putting the strike action over to the Industrial Relations Commission.
The union hopes to be able to force the government to listen.
"The premier has indicated that there may be something in the budget, but we're not waiting until June to find that out," she said.
Minister for Education Sarah Mitchell said she has had "multiple conversations as minister with local principals and teachers".
"I have never been invited to meet with a union member in the Tamworth electorate," she said.
"I am happy to meet with the Tamworth area union reps, although currently union reps seem to walk out of schools when I walk in making discussion difficult.
"My job is to meet with teachers, students parents and other school staff and I do that every day including over the past two weeks."
As part of the unions' ongoing industrial action, federation members are authorised to walk out of schools whenever a government MP enters it.
The premier Dominic Perrottet and minister Mitchell delayed wage negotiations earlier this week until after the June budget, hinting that the wage cap policy would go.
Ms Mitchell said wage rises were "big decisions, it's billions of dollars that government needs to decide about how we're going to spend this money."
'Every student deserves a teacher'
Quirindi Public School principal Ian Worley said his school is at wits' end finding enough staff. They have made personal contact with more than 500 teachers trying to find permanent or temporary staff, yet remain understaffed.
"What does it look like for a school for staff and students when there are just not enough teachers? - It's simple, ultimately, students suffer," he said.
"Eventually the goodwill on which our system exists is going to dry up and it's going to disappear."
He said the shortages have now caused the resignation of junior staff, leading to even more shortages.
"Shouldn't every student and every secondary student have a right to know that every one of their classes not only has a teacher allocated to teach them, but an appropriate specialist teacher trained in that area?"
Charmaine Endacott, assistant principal at Uralla Central School and member of the teachers' federation council said it had been a unanimous decision by councillors to go ahead with the strike.
"This has been coming for a very long time..." she said.
"We're in this desperate teacher shortage, and why can't we attract them? Because who wants to come into a job where your main focus is not teaching and you're not even getting paid for it?"
Oxley High School teacher Natasha Gillin said the problem needed to be solved or there would be no future for public education.
"My teaching career will probably finish in the next five years. I don't know who's going to take over," she said.
"I want to make sure there's a career for [the next generation] and I want to make sure there's teachers in front of our kids that are educating them, because our students are missing out."
Workloads are getting so intense, that as many as three-in-four teachers told the union in a recent survey their workload is "unmanageable".
Some 70 per cent are considering leaving education.
NSW Teachers Federation President Angelo Gavrielatos said the only way to attract new teachers into the profession was to raise pay.
"The Department of Education's own figures show that there were 77 vacant permanent teaching positions in the electorate of Tamworth last October," he said.
Some Tamworth schools remained open on Wednesday, conducting minimal supervision, with several closing their doors entirely.
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