In the midst of nationwide teacher shortages, university students studying teaching say they are rethinking their career choice after seeing students fight, scream and throw furniture during placements at secondary schools.
As of July this year, more than 500 state school secondary teacher positions were advertised on the Victorian Education Department's website.
The state government has introduced measures to boost teaching degree enrolments, recruit and retain teachers, and make regional areas more alluring.
These include up to $50,000 for teachers who relocate to hard-to-staff positions, payments for teaching students to complete regional placements and making secondary teaching degrees free for people who enrol in 2024 and 2025.
However, some university students say their mandated pre-service teaching rounds have made them realise a free degree is not worth the emotional cost of being a teacher.
Pre-service placement teachers say they see too many behavioural issues in secondary school classrooms. (ABC RN: Safdar Ahmed)
'I really just wanted to drop out of my degree'
One teaching student, who wished to remain anonymous, told the ABC her first placement at a state secondary school made her want to drop out of her degree.
"The students in class scream, throw scissors, laptops, and chairs," the placement teacher said.
"Every single day I witnessed kids getting into physical fights."
Former staff have made a range of claims about student behaviour at Warrnambool College. (ABC News: Mark Leonardi)
The university student described feeling filled with terror after students barked at her on her second day of placement.
In Victoria, pre-service teachers do not have legal status in the classroom and must have a qualified teacher present when teaching a lesson.
Despite this, the future teacher was asked to supervise a class alone while on placement.
"Based on the destructive nature of the students I did not feel safe … if something went wrong, I am not legally qualified to be supervising but I didn't feel like I could say no," the placement teacher said.
"It honestly makes me not want to be a teacher — the pay conditions do not cover what you face … and I won't earn enough to be able to send my kids to a school outside the state system."
'You're really not prepared'
A first-year secondary teacher, who was considering moving into a part-time position next year, told the ABC she thought universities did not do enough to prepare future teachers for the realities of their careers.
"With teacher shortages going on at the moment, I think there are a few issues that maybe aren't raised because they don't want to scare people out of the profession," the teacher, who wished to remain anonymous, said.
The recent graduate completed placements in regional and metropolitan schools and said during that time she had to convince herself not to drop out of the degree.
"I had friends that dropped out of the course throughout that time as well, so I know for some of them that was not just a thought, but a reality," the new teacher said.
She said while sexist behaviour was a mainstay in all the schools she worked in, it had worsened since she moved into a full-time role.
"Maybe they [students] think it's a comfortable space, so now I can say this stuff and Miss won't really care," the graduate teacher said.
She said universities needed to start this conversation with prospective teachers before they went into schools for placements and help them develop strategies to manage it.
"At least in my experience, we didn't have any conversations around that prior to going out into schools."
Solving the teacher crisis
According to federal Education Minister Jason Clare at a national conference last year, only 50 per cent of students who start a teaching degree finish it.
20 per cent of those who do finish leave the profession in the first three years.
The problem is not isolated to Australia, with UNESCO's global report on teachers projecting another 44 million teachers needed across the globe to achieve universal primary and secondary education by 2030.
University of Newcastle laureate professor of education Jenny Gore said financial incentives were not enough to solve the teacher vacancy crisis.
"Most people are not motivated to teach by finances, they are motivated to make a difference," Professor Gore said.
"I do think in the current climate that a lot of teachers are feeling it [is] harder to make the kind of difference they want to make and to be the kind of teacher they want to."
Jenny Gore says more needs to be done to tackle the problem. (Supplied: University of Newcastle.)
She said student teachers were going into teaching positions before they finished their degrees because of the shortages.
"They're going into schools where things are harder," she said,
"So we've got students who are deciding that they don't want to teach even before they complete their degrees."
Professor Gore said she was calling for a policy overhaul to address the issues affecting the work of teachers and student teachers.
"There's a real systemic problem and we can't just be doing small strategies that are designed to help one part of the system," Professor Gore said.
The ABC understands the Victorian Department of Education is working with at least one tertiary institution on a program to support pre-service placement teachers but has been unable to confirm the details.