Survey research among Australian teachers revealed that teachers experience tensions between student well-being concerns and the demands of academic performance and improvement agendas. Qualitative findings revealed teachers view student-teacher relationships as imperative to student well-being and academic development. However, in a time of metrics-based education systems and pre-packaged programmes, a focus on strengthening teacher-student relationships is somewhat incongruent with current content-delivery trends and funding priorities. Teachers promoted a concept of holistic education that accorded with socio-ecological models of living and learning. These findings point to a need to better understand how to best resource student-teacher relationships for productive learning.