NSW Education Minister Sarah Mitchell said under new proposals, student teachers could be paid to complete internships and change of career teachers could be hired as apprentices instead of enrolling into tertiary study.

The Department of Education also suggested a pay increase for speciality teachers.

Wagga Teachers' Association president Michelle McKelvie said teachers should not be "cherry-picked" for pay increases.

She also said hiring more student teachers to fill positions would only increase the pressure on those students and provide them with little support.

"They're given full teacher workloads and often not even in the field they're specialising in," she said.

"They need extra time off class and they need mentoring."

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With a career spanning more than 20 years, Ms McKelvie said she never stops work when she walks out the school gates.

"The job has gotten a lot more complex since I started," she said.

"Obviously there's the face-to-face teaching component, but there's also differentiating teaching plans for students, meetings duties, marking, and professional development which we're expected to do in our own time."

Ms McKelvie said the crisis was caused by the NSW education system itself.

"The Department [of Education] needs to address underlying structural issues to make the profession more attractive," she said.

"We're asking for an extra two hours of release time a week and a pay rise for all teachers."

Many Wagga teachers went on strike in May, asking the Department for a pay rise between 5 and 7.5 per cent and extra two hours of release from face-to-face teaching per week.

Wagga NSW Teachers Federation schools organiser Jack O'Brien said release from face-to-face teaching - the time teachers are allocated to plan lessons - had not increased since the 1990s for high school teachers. For primary teachers, it hasn't changed since the 1950s.

Mr O'Brien said the majority of teachers were working for more than 60 hours each week to keep up with the workload.

"No teacher works from just 9am to 3pm," he said.

A spokesperson for the Department of Education said they were "cutting red tape" and reducing administration tasks for teachers, but did not confirm how.

"The NSW Department of Education is focused on moderninsing the profession to not only encourage more people into teaching, but to also improve the workload and develop new career pathways so our best teachers stay in the profession," the spokesperson said.

The union estimates the state will need 3800 additional teachers by 2027.

Mr O'Brien said the union was committed to campaigning for change until the state election next year.

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