The drastic action comes in the wake of the State Governments failure to address unsustainable workloads and their unwillingness to provide competitive salaries to attract more teachers to the profession.

According to NSW Federation President Angelo Gavrielatos, the 'drastic action' warranted the severity of the situation.

"We are facing a perfect storm: plummeting new graduate numbers, rising enrolments, an ageing workforce which spell out acute teacher shortages," Mr Gavrielatos said.

"The Perrottet Government is refusing to listen to the warnings of its own education department that the unsustainable workloads and uncompetitive salaries of teachers are contributing to growing shortages and turning people off teaching."

The situation is so bad that the education department warned in 2020 that NSW could run out of teachers in the next five years.

Mr Gavrielatos noted that the decision was not taken lightly to undertake a stoppage and disrupt classroom learning.

"Over the course of the last 18 months we have exhausted all options available to us to arrive at a negotiated settlement with the government," Mr Gavrielatos said.

"This is about the future of the teaching profession and the quality of education children receive. No student should miss out because of a lack of teachers, but this is what is going to increasingly happen across NSW if the government fails to act."

NSW Teachers Federation Western Organiser Brett Bertalli said that the public education sector was 'in crisis'.

"Teachers feel compelled to take action, schools just can't fill vacant positions, especially in regional towns like Griffith," Mr Bertalli said.

At Murrumbidgee Regional High School alone, there are eight vacancies, with teachers calling on the Department in May to address the staffing issues "plaguing the school".

"Continuing with these uncompetitive salaries is unstainable for the future and impedes on the Departments own ability to attract people to the profession," Mr Bertalli said.

"The workload, which has become more complex over the last 15 years is also pushing teachers to leave the profession, they are under increasing strain and are getting burnt out by the excessive work they are expected to do."

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Based on the recommendations of the independent Gallop inquiry, teachers and principals are seeking a salary increase of between 5 to 7.5 per cent a year to recognise the increase in their skills and expertise and begin to reverse the decline in teachers' wages compared to other professions.

The findings however have fallen on deaf ears.

"We have provided evidence to say to the department of education that this is what needs to be done to fix this crisis but they have refused to accept the findings," Mr Bertalli said.

"At this stage we are hoping that the Premier will intervene because we need a change in legislation that locks our wages in, we simply cannot continue moving backwards.

"This is about the future of the teaching profession and the quality of education children receive. No student should miss out because of a lack of teachers, but this is what is going to increasingly happen across NSW if the government fails to act."

And whilst the strike is an unfortunate ultimatum, federation members deem it unlikely that this will be the last industrial action that will be undertaken for the cause.

"At this stage it does not look like this government will act to resolve the crisis the public education sector is facing, but teachers are resolved to fight until the very end," Mr Bertalli said.

"If you don't care about teacher shortages, you don't care about kids missing out."

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