Up to $337 million will be allocated to the initiative which will see casual, temporary, retired and student teachers employed in the role of small-group tutors.

Announced last week by the NSW minister for education, Sarah Mitchell, it is intended to address the learning deficit that may have occurred in public schools during the COVID-19 induced lockdown.

Retired Riverina-based secondary mathematics teacher Jan Stevens questions how the program will work with such a tight timeframe to hire tutors.

"I've been discussing it with my husband who was also a teacher and with others, I asked them, would you go back and do it," she said.

"We all don't know who would go back."

The dollar figure assigned to the new program is something Ms Stevens wholeheartedly welcomes, saying "any extra spending on education is critical".

"That's absolutely wonderful but my concern is it's a little ad hoc," she said.

"This is supposed to start day one of next year, but you can't just call up retired teachers."

Ms Stevens retired a decade ago, while her husband left the profession eight years ago.

She said those who are in her position would require retraining to cope with all that has changed in the classroom since they last stepped inside.

"A lot have said they felt they wouldn't be prepared to re-enter the classroom now," she said.

Riverina organiser of the NSW Teachers Federation, John Pratt, told The Daily Advertiser the complexities of the planning could even lead to retired teachers being left out of the program all together.

"[The government] is saying it will be looking for retired teachers [as well as students and casuals], but it's going to be too difficult," he said.

"It's going to be too hard for the department to employ anything other than the existing casuals it already has because those are the ones who have done the onboarding and checks.

"The only practical way is to employ people who have already gone through that process."

In that case, Mr Pratt said, it will leave the public school system in a deficit of casual teachers to fill in classroom duties, "exacerbating a problem we already have with not enough casuals to go around".

The NSW Department of Education was contacted for a further explanation on how the program will be run. But The Daily Advertiser was directed to the department's website which reads "More information about the program will be provided directly to schools and made available on this website in the coming weeks".