Anonymous #452

Submitter information

Name

Anonymous #452

Where are you located?

New South Wales

What type of area do you live in?

Regional or rural

Are you an education professional?
(e.g. teacher, school leader, learning support assistant, teacher’s aide)

Yes

Which sector do you work in?

I have worked in primary, secondary, special education, higher education (TAFE, universities) in Australia and abroad.

What is your occupation?

Semi-retired.

Elevating the profession

The actions proposed recognise the value teachers bring to students, communities and the economy.

Strongly disagree

Would you like to provide feedback about these actions?

The proposed "actions" (such as $10 million ad campaign) are cynical and cosmetic, and will predictably fail to alter public perceptions, which is what they are attempting to do.
Whilst entry ATARs to ITE degree programs are not used or remain deflated - that is, whilst ITE providers continue to optimise enrolments by lowering ATAR entry standards to <50 and as low as ATAR 20 in some cases, then we will continue to see "less-able" applicants entering teacher education degree programs, and "less able" teachers entering the workforce, perpetuating the perception that teachers are not "the best and brightest".
If this government is serious about "elevating the profession" they need to consider why school leavers are not interested in teaching. They've just left school, and they know what they'd be in for. The disincentives to teaching are not cosmetic; they include wages, working conditions (which are the conditions for teaching and learning).
Prizes, awards, rewards for service will not stop undergraduates "not completing" nor stop teachers from leaving the service.
The government should quarantine teacher education from political interference. Remember, the quality of teachers impacts on the preparation of our prospective workforce. Teaching should be up there with Medicine, and actually even more valued (via remuneration, and proper national planning), because it impacts directly on Australian society and economy.
Remember when post-colonisation left so many countries without a teaching workforce? Those countries struggled to build their nation's human capital. This and previous Australian governments have failed to deliver successive generations of school leavers with the foundation skills in literacy, numeracy and STEM, because they have been too preoccupied with creating markets, in schools, which by their own government reviews and reports are failing to deliver. All of these factors contribute to public perceptions that teaching is not a valued profession.
Running a $10 million ad campaign looks like a desperate attempt to shape public perceptions. It lacks substance. It will only reinforce public perceptions that the government is not serious.

Improving teacher supply

The actions proposed will be effective in increasing the number of students entering ITE, number of students completing ITE and the number of teachers staying in and/or returning to the profession.

Strongly disagree

Would you like to provide feedback about these actions?

The critical shortfall in teacher supply is a problem going back decades. In 1986, five years after I started teaching, I wrote a short piece published in the NSW Teachers' Federation journal Education, titled "Making Us Look Bad", about students in western Sydney being stigmatised because they had been without classes and lessons due to unfilled vacancies in their schools. I doubt there has ever been a time when rural, regional and remote schools were fully staffed. The only schools that seem to have continuous supply are urban schools, elite private schools, blue-ribbon state schools. This is a national disgrace!
The present critical shortfall in supply is the direct result of a lack of planning, and a naive reliance on "market forces" to deliver supply. When the Gillard Labor government, in 2012, removed caps and quotas on entry to teaching degree programs, they abandoned standards. They established Australia's domestic market in degrees, and Initial Teacher Education (ITE) became a "cash cow" for providers. How? Many ITE providers lowered ATAR entry requirements, and by 2015, an estimated half of enrolments in ITE degree programs had an ATAR of less than 50, even as low as 20. Of course, providers were enamoured with the deregulated environment, and "cashed in" on the revenue stream made available through Commonwealth Supported Places (CSPs).
Reference: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1304970.pdf
See Australian University Review 63:01: ATARs, Zombie Ideas and Sir Robert Menzies by Robert Lewis

This is the fundamental contradiction that makes "the status quo" such a problem:

Higher education providers exploit the deregulated environment to optimise profits. They are pursuing their mission, and it is in their interest to secure funding, it seems despite the social and economic consequences. So they lower ATAR entry requirements, or dismiss them altogether. As a consequence, lower standards of entry necessitate lower standards of course delivery and produce less-able teachers. This has a negative impact on standards of teaching in schools.

To improve supply, improve teachers' wages, conditions for teaching and learning and raise standards!!

Strengthening Initial Teacher Education (ITE)

The actions proposed will ensure initial teacher education supports teacher supply and quality.

Strongly disagree

Would you like to provide feedback about these actions?

Refer to the good work of Dr Rachel Wilson, who makes the crucial point (repeatedly in her published work on ATARs and teacher education) that the "assurance of high standards" and "stability in those standards are minimum starting points for successful education systems". Wilson, 2020 The Profession at Risk

The draft plan makes no mention of ATARs. ATARs are "fit for purpose", if not, they would be abandoned by the Group of 8 universities, and they would not be used as a means to ensure that "the best and brightest" enter Medicine.

Teaching is equally as complex as Medicine. Teachers, who are "able" to do their jobs effectively need to have advanced literacy, numeracy and STEM before they enter an ITE degree program.
As the Productivity Commission report (2019) - The Demand Driven University System: A Mixed Report Card - made clear, the low completion rates (at around 50% - also a national disgrace) are in part due to the lowering of entry standards, meaning that significant numbers are entering ITE degree programs without the literacy, numeracy and STEM necessary to complete. That report also notes that this is NOT in the best interests of these undergraduates who drop out, and it is NOT an efficient use of resources etcetera.

Unfortunately, successive governments (federal, state and territory) have dismantled effective teaching programs, both undergraduate and post-graduate, such as the Institute of Technical and Adult Teacher Education.

Raise entry standards! Utilise the ATARs of school leavers. But the only way to attract larger numbers of more able applicants to ITE degree programs is to raise teachers' wages and improve conditions for teaching in schools: reduce class sizes to maximum of 20, and reduce teachers workload to 16 hours face-to-face class time to ensure teachers have sufficient preparation time.

The only way to increase supply is to VALUE teachers' work, by comprehensively improving the conditions for teaching, and wages, and this will shift public perceptions of teaching, and attract better applicants and graduates, without have to test their literacy and numeracy before they exit - seriously flawed (LANTITE)!!!

Maximising the time to teach

The actions proposed will improve retention and free up teachers to focus on teaching and collaboration.

Strongly disagree

Would you like to provide feedback about these actions?

Once again, proposals like 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18 are partly cosmetic, partly time-wasting, and vague. They will also prove to be ineffective.

Teacher workloads can be simply reduced by mandating across the national school system the optimum contact hours, class sizes and improved conditions for teaching in schools. In my experience working in schools in Australia, Hong Kong and Indonesia, the optimum contact hours (maximum, less is better) would be 16 hours face-to-face per week, and class sizes of 20 maximum or less. Why? Because you have sufficient preparation time, which is critical for addressed the needs of mixed-ability classes. And 20 students in a class is manageable, allowing a teacher to really get to know their students, profile their learning needs and redress difficulties many will display in class. Good teaching involves not just lesson preparation, but marking, processing test results to ensure students are achieving programmed learning outcomes, and so on.
By suggesting, as in 16, to "examine" how to support implementation of the national curriculum through "resources" that "should be adaptable" to "reduce workloads" is an appalling suggestion. In practice this looks like downloadable materials that all teachers can and should use in schools, and their is plenty of this happening already.
If teachers are not capable of designing specialist materials that (1) meet the needs of their students, and (2) contribute to school resource banks (school-based syllabus) that are (3) consistent with a well-designed National curriculum framework, then they are not properly prepared to teach.
To provide optional support materials is okay, but NOT to do this as a means to reduce workloads. Materials and resources should be cautiously and thoughtfully selected and adapted for use in the classroom. To suggest that teachers need to rely upon "one-size-fits-all" resources is an insult to teachers' professionalism.
Implied in 18 is that non-teaching staff can be "converted" to teaching is also absurd, and will be interpreted as further downgrading the status of teachers. If support staff are interested in teaching, they should apply to study at university

Better understanding future teacher workforce needs

How effective are the proposed actions in better understanding future teacher workforce needs, including the number of teachers required?

Not effective at all

Would you like to provide feedback about these actions?

Firstly, the Minister makes mention of transparency, yet has never made mention of the present numbers of teacher vacancies across the national school system or state by state, or territory. Why not be up front?
It is of course critical for planning and redressing the shortfall in teacher supply to have numbers, and projected numbers into the future.
The present situation is not a misstep or accident. The present crisis is the direct and deliberate result of experimenting with "the market" in ITE degrees to supply teacher graduates, AND IT HAS FAILED!

The idea of looking to immigration as a solution to meet supply might seem like a rational idea, but by taking migrant teachers and placing them in our schools, this is an admission of failure on the part of authorities - that is failure to plan and manage the national school system by supplying schools with Australian teachers of quality.

No thought whatsoever has been given to the likelihood that the countries from which these teachers are taken contributes to shortages in supply of teachers in those countries. This is commonly referred to as the "brain drain". Australia should be training up quality teachers, doctors and health staff and assisting our neighbours in the Pacific by supplying skilled professionals to assist them in this time of global pandemic and international economic stagnation.

Of course the federal minister should have access to numbers and projected numbers, and it is unbelievable that the outgoing ministers for education - all five - did not have access to this data, which must be available to state/territory ministers, otherwise how do they plan for situations such as the present crisis in teacher supply.

Better career pathways to support and retain teachers in the profession

The proposed actions will improve career pathways, including through streamlining the process for Highly Accomplished and Lead Teacher (HALT) accreditation, and providing better professional support for teachers to retain them in the profession.

Strongly disagree

Would you like to provide feedback about these actions?

Most of the plan's proposals in relation to bursaries and incentives are pathetically cheap and nasty, and are unlikely to deliver the requisite supply of quality graduates, nor deliver clear pathways for teachers to enrich their experience of teaching. Some of the "less able" teachers who flounder in the classroom are presently inclined to retreat from classroom teaching by pursuing higher duties, and many are being promoted into managerial positions in schools.

In 2012, the then Minister for Education, Adrian Piccoli, introduced the Local Schools-Local Decisions reforms, which devolved school management to school principals. This delivered to school principals the power to hire and delegate duties to teaching staff, all very undemocratic. But what it also enabled was the rise of cronyism in many schools, so that teachers "on side with the boss" would seek promotions, and consequently schools have become less functional, less about quality education and more about job security and politics. The NSW Dept of Education's 2019 review of LSLD reforms concluded that as a result of these changes there had not been any significant improvements in learning outcomes for students - and we should not lose sight of the fact that this is what schooling is all about. Since that report the incumbent minister, Sarah Mitchell has not dismantled this reform, because it fits with her commitment to the "market economics". Notably in 2019 Sarah Mitchell was condemning the university sector for not being serious about preparing our teachers for schools. Again, nothing was changed.

Whilst teachers' wages stagnate, whilst working conditions and workloads remain untenable, whilst governments remain committed to perpetuating lower standards across the system, and especially in teacher education, "career pathways" is as empty an expression as the Minister's endorsement of micro-credentialing. Note that some of the Go8 universities are abandoning micro-credentials because they recognise these are B*** Sh** courses. Educators, including many of the so-called experts recognise that higher education involves research, thinking, dialogue and higher-order abstract thinking...