Australian public school teachers are spending close to $177 million of their own money each year on basic classroom supplies, according to new data from the Australian Education Union (AEU), highlighting the personal cost of ongoing underfunding in public schools.
The AEU’s 2025 State of Our Schools survey, conducted in late 2025, surveyed 10,384 public school teachers across Australia. It found that 86.4 per cent of teachers spend their own money on classroom supplies, with an average annual outlay of $988 per teacher. Nationally, this equates to $176,976,760 each year.
Teachers working in primary schools reported the highest average spending at $1,047 annually, followed by special school teachers at $1,013. Teachers in very remote schools reported average out-of-pocket costs of $1,197 per year.
AEU Federal President Ms Correna Haythorpe said the findings revealed an “unacceptable reality” for the profession.
“The unacceptable reality is that teachers are spending significant amounts of their own money on the basic necessities needed to run a classroom,” Ms Haythorpe said.
“We’re not talking about nice-to-haves or personal touches. Teachers are paying for basic items like stationery, books, classroom equipment, and materials to support individual students.”
The survey found teachers most commonly spend their own money on stationery (85.2 per cent) and classroom equipment (84.2 per cent). More than half of respondents (51.5 per cent) reported purchasing items to support individual students, while 37.9 per cent bought library textbooks or resources. Smaller proportions spent money on sports or play equipment (16.3 per cent) and study trips or excursions (5.7 per cent).
Teachers working in schools they described as “under resourced” reported significantly higher spending, averaging $1,119 each year, compared with $660 for teachers in schools considered “adequately resourced”.
Spending also varied by socio-economic context. Teachers in schools in the middle band of socio-economic status (SES) reported the highest average spending at $1,212 per year, compared with $949 in low SES schools and $768 in high SES schools.
Ms Haythorpe said teachers’ willingness to personally cover classroom costs was being taken for granted.
“Teachers do this because they care deeply about their students, but their goodwill is being exploited,” she said. “When more than 85 per cent of public school teachers are spending nearly $1,000 a year of their own money, that’s not generosity, that’s a system failure.”
She said the financial burden was falling heaviest on teachers working in the most challenging contexts, including under-resourced and remote schools.
“With the new bilateral funding agreements that have been struck between the Commonwealth and state and territory governments, the responsibility sits firmly with governments to get this funding into schools as soon as possible,” Ms Haythorpe said.
She also pointed to Victoria, where no full funding agreement is currently in place, calling on the state government to commit to a full 75 per cent share of the Schooling Resource Standard to ensure full funding for public schools.
“Governments must prioritise the delivery of this much needed resource to public schools so that teachers aren’t forced to choose between their own household budgets and their students’ learning,” she said.
