MORE than half of Victoria's secondary schools have staff teaching subjects they are not qualified to teach, according to a survey that provides worrying new evidence of a worsening teacher shortage.


The Australian Education Union will release its survey of almost 1500 government school principals today to coincide with a visit to Canberra in which it will lobby the Federal Government to create a national strategy to arrest problems in teacher supply.


Even in primary schools, where the problem of teachers working outside their area of expertise is less acute, more than a third of Victorian schools said they had programs taught by teachers not qualified in the area. Maths was the subject most commonly taught by teachers not fully qualified in the area, followed by technology, computer science, languages, science and m