A heartbroken son is speaking out on the personal toll of Australia’s broken education system following the death of his 65-year-old mum.

School principal Trish Antulov was found dead at her desk earlier this year after having suffered a heart attack on the back of many 14-hour days spent in her office.

‘Spitting the dummy’ airs this Sunday on Channel 9 after The Block. For more on 60 Minutes head to the Extra Minutes website.

The coroner is investigating her death, but her son John has no doubts that it’s the ever-increasing stress of the job that played a major part in her sudden death.

“I have done a lot of high-stress jobs in the military, but you are equipped to deal with that specific stress,” says John.

“But I wouldn’t do (teaching). No way in the world.”

He isn’t alone.

Tonight on 60 Minutes, reporter Tom Steinfort investigates the growing number of complaints against Australia’s education system – a system that is failing not only its students but its teachers as well.

Speaking to teachers, psychologists and parents, Steinfort questions where we are going wrong. Why are teachers so stressed and students so anxious?

As he discovers, for many the answer lies with NAPLAN.

For the last 10 years, the NAPLAN standardised testing system has been rolled out in schools across the country in the hope of identifying where students are struggling and how we can make improvements.

It came as a shock then that after a decade of its use, a recent UN report card ranked Australia 39^th out of 42 advanced countries when it comes to the quality of schooling – behind the likes of Lithuania, Slovakia, Mexico and Kazakhstan.

Only 71.7 percent of Australian 15-year-olds are achieving baseline standards in the three key areas of education.

Critics claim the data from NAPLAN is being used as a basis for schools to compete against each other, and teachers say that being assessors rather than educators is shortchanging students and pushing them to breaking point.

Former teacher Gabbie Stroud tells Steinfort she was forced to walk away from her career in 2014 after seeing too many colleagues crumble under the pressure.

“I could feel myself slipping away, like my actual identity slipping away, my ability to laugh and joke, and my ability to cry,” she says.

She believes the immense pressure on teachers to produce good NAPLAN results leaves them unable to do the job that they were actually trained to do.

And in turn, the students suffer.

Tonight, Steinfort explores the effects of the federal government’s NAPLAN testing and the alternatives that could overhaul our education system.

It’s an important investigation for all Australian families to see.

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