Alarmingly, the Western Plains region is the home of three of the top ten understaffed school in the state, based on term four figures from last year.

The teacher shortage across NSW has become a hot election topic as all contestants grapple with ways to resolve the crisis at a time when workforce gaps are challenging virtually every industry in regional Australia.

A $14-million government program to attract teachers to work in state schools has been labelled a failure by the teachers union, with several schools still with multiple vacant positions.

The Recruitment Beyond program was announced in 2021 with a goal of recruiting more than 560 teachers from interstate and overseas by 2024.

But, so far, only 11 teachers had been recruited through the program to start work by term one this year a fact confirmed by Education Minister Sarah Mitchell.

Among local schools impacted are Brewarrina Central School with a 54 per cent teacher vacancy rate, Walgett Community College High with a 47% and Walgett Community College Primary with a 35% vacancy rate (term 4, 2022 figures).

Across NSW up to 32,000 teachers could quit the profession, according to a new report by the Black Dog Institute, potentially exacerbating the classroom crisis in NSW driven by teacher shortages and crippling workloads.

The report shows that almost half of Australian teachers (47%) are considering quitting teaching in the coming year. 

Last year, a Parliamentary survey found that 92% of NSW teachers blamed workload as the main driver of teacher shortages.

Brayden Holland, a teacher from Dubbo and a NSW Teacher's Federation representative said teachers were often asked to teach two or three merged classes outside at once due to the staff shortages.

This backs up survey findings that showed that 92% of teachers said shortages had resulted in collapsed or merged classes in the last two years and 40% said the shortages had resulted in unsupervised classes. 

The ABC spoke to Dubbo school counsellor Gary Black, 70, said he wanted to retire ten years ago, but felt a duty to keep working due to the shortage of counsellors.

Mr Black is sent out to primary and secondary schools in towns such as Gilgandra, Coonabarabran and Gwabegar and said many of the schools he visited had gone without a counsellor for years.

"What that means is students miss out on assessments, and because they can't get an assessment done they can't apply for extra funding to help those students," he said.