Alfredton Primary had one advertised position over summer that received no applications, although it was later readvertised and filled, and principal Laurel Donaldson said she knew of several other schools that had failed to receive a single application for a vacant job.

"With teaching being such a demanding job, Curriculum Replacement Teachers, CRTs, have indicated that they prefer this work (walk in, walk out) in preference to contracts of longer duration as they don't want the additional responsibilities: meetings, additional planning, assessing and reporting and after hours work," Ms Donaldson said.

"I can understand the attraction of this," she admitted.

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"I have heard of more than one school that have advertised longer-term positions for a full term, or year, that either result in no applicants or applicants that don't meet the selection criteria."

Ms Donaldson said Alfredton was lucky to have a loyal pool of CRTs to step in for sick or absent classroom teachers with up to eight to 10 teachers a day away from school.

"This all seems to be a post-COVID situation. I talked to one of my CRTs today and they pretty much said why would I want the additional workload when I can come in for a day of work and leave and not have the additional responsibilities of the job," she said.

"That could be quite a drawcard because the CRT rate is quite reasonable, however the downside of that is you don't get your long service leave, holidays and all those additional benefits that come with full time employment.

"A lot of people across the globe have reassessed their work and life balance because of COVID and a lot of people now put a different emphasis on their work life so they opt to make a change."

The daily challenge of filling staff absences in all school has seen some specialist programs cut, principals and other school leaders back in the classroom, and a reliance on fourth year university students granted permission to teach through the Victorian Institute of Teaching.

"We are certainly finding it a challenge day to day to find CRTs and the (education) department has a support pool of people they are redeploying from regional and central offices that I've used in recent times ... but the pool is pretty dry in Ballarat I sense from talking to colleagues at other schools," said Miners Rest Primary principal Dale Power.

"We either redeploy our specialist staff like PE, art and STEM teachers to go and take classes to deliver literacy and numeracy requirements, or our tutors, or sometimes our executive team go in to classes as well and when all that is exhausted we try really hard to search for a CRT.

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Mount Clear College principal Lynita Taylor said the early part of the year had been more difficult in terms of staffing.

"There's definitely not the pool (of teachers) that there was ... we are doing ok but we wouldn't be without being a bit creative.

"We've had to pull staff off support programs that we would normally run to put in to classes."

Ms Taylor said they had particular difficulty recruiting for the school's mental health and wellbeing team, but that vacancy had now been filled.