A crowd of about 20 teachers from local primary and secondary schools gathered at the Victory Memorial Gardens on Monday afternoon to protest their working conditions.

The teachers are calling for a 5 per cent pay increase over the next two years and two hours less face-to-face teaching each day.

They are also pushing for an additional 2.5 per cent pay rise for experienced and promoted teachers.

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Michelle McKelvie, president of the Wagga Teachers Association, said these changes would make teaching a more attractive profession and help combat the shortages being faced by many local schools.

"We're asking the government to give more than thanks and we're asking them to improve working conditions so we can attract new teachers because we're in a chronic situation," Ms McKelvie said.

"Currently if a teacher is away there is often nobody available to replace that teacher and students are just provided with minimal supervision which is absolutely not ideal for their learning.

"These two changes would help us recruit and retain our best teachers which is so important because public education affects everyone in the community."

Ms McKelvie said teachers in the Riverina are regularly quitting due to the conditions they are expected to work under.

"We have teachers leaving the profession in droves because they're not finding the work satisfying enough, they're not feeling supported and they're feeling overwhelmed with the workload," she said.

According to the NSW Teachers Association, 80 per cent of Riverina public schools had vacant permanent teaching positions in October and there was 143 total vacancies.

Henry Rajendra, deputy president of the association, said this is a "dire situation" that will be continue to worsen due to the decreasing numbers of teaching graduates.

"Over the next 20 years there will be an increase of 25 per cent to student enrolments which is a massive growth," Mr Rajendra said.

"What we need is to not only address the staffing shortages now but we also need a significant growth in the number of teachers - to do so you need to make the profession attractive."

He said if the issue is not addressed now there will be "many, many years of pain and suffering" for regional public schools.

The rally was part of the NSW Teachers Federation's statewide campaign "More Than Thanks".

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