Thousands of teachers from public and Catholic schools have converged on Sydney's CBD and other locations around NSW in an historic joint strike over pay and conditions.
The groups gathered at Hyde Park before walking to State Parliament, chanting and singing about working conditions.
The NSW Teachers Federation has described the government's offer of a 3 per cent pay increase, which was included in last week's state budget, as "an insult" that is below inflation.
This is the third lot of industrial action by teachers in seven months.
The union said there was almost 2,000 staff vacancies across the state, with more than half of those in regional areas, and that the problem wouldn't be fixed until the state government offered more attractive salaries.
"They're going to have to do a major reset of salaries to do that and unless they're going to address the workload issues, they're going to keep losing teachers as well," said spokesman Stephen Kelly.
NSW Education Minister Sarah Mitchell accused the union of politicising negotiations over teachers' pay and conditions.
Ms Mitchell said the NSW government's pay offer was the most generous in the country.
"I am disappointed with the action today, it really does make it very difficult for thousands of families and students and it's frustrating that they're continuing to push down this cause rather than just to negotiate with us and try and reach a good outcome," Ms Mitchell said.
"We've got the most generous pay increase on the table of anywhere in the country, yet other states aren't seeing this sort of industrial action."
More than 1,000 people attended a rally in Wollongong this morning, as public school and Catholic school teachers from the Illawarra and the Shoalhaven took part in the joint industrial action.
Keira High School teacher Sally Saunders said teachers should be paid "what they're worth".
"We are putting in so many hours outside of normal school hours," Ms Saunders said.
"We want to be paid in line with inflation because anything less than that is a pay cut."
In Wagga Wagga teachers and their supporters marched for 1 kilometre through the town's centre, making it the largest teacher strike in the regional city for two decades.
Adelong teacher Cath Parker, who has been in the job for 30 years, said the workload had increased unreasonably in that time
"There's a lot of overwork and burn out of teachers who are expected to do a lot more than teach children," Ms Parker said.
"It seems to be a lot of unnecessary paperwork and it's undermining education.
"People need to understand that the teaching profession is under stress.
"Things have to change because people are leaving and people aren't coming in."
