Why are we letting people train to be teachers who will not get jobs?

The Sydney Morning Herald recently published this article: Teaching: 40,000 looking for permanent jobs, which explored the problem with so many teachers out of work. It gave one possible explanation as the move to casualisation of the workforce. This necessarily only involves a small proportion of the workforce. I think that an overlooked issue is that we are currently training teachers in our universities that we would not want teaching in our schools.

As Hattie points out, the biggest external influence on student performance is the teacher. How can we justify training someone who got 59 (ACU) as their ATAR to be a teacher? In fact almost all degrees require a low entry ATAR simply to fill places with people that we will not employ. Macquarie University had a cut-off 2012 of 75, Charles Sturt University: 70, University of New South Wales: 78, University of Technology, Sydney: 75 and the only respectable cut-off from Sydney University of 90.

If as a student, someone has failed to achieve outcomes and be in the top 10% of the state (ATAR over 90) then how can they use that experience to teach the next generation of students in the top 10% of the state?

For sure, I've taught students who have been smarter than I have and I hope that this will always be, but there has to be an adequate minimum for the teaching profession. I argue that 90.00 be that minimum.

Short term consequences and considerations:

• Smaller numbers in teaching degrees, which may decrease the number of teachers currently seeking full time employment (40,000)


• There is already a shortage of Mathematics and Science teachers. Rather than flooding schools with teachers who cannot teach calculus-mathematics, we need to address this with high school students as a viable and worthy career path. Certainly salaries can be looked at. If you can pay less because there are so many teachers of a particular subject, but have to pay more for other subjects then it may have to revolutionise the remuneration of teachers. Maybe there are in fact too many visual arts teachers (picking up on the SMH article). If the salary was to go down, the supply would also fall.


• Raising the standard of the profession and it's view within society.

Let's look to a brighter future for our children and our students who have teacher that not only care about them, but can help them succeed to the highest of heights.

 

There is also a need to review those that are currently in the profession that possibly should not be. With the mandatory accreditation with the NSW Institute of Teachers in 2015, I believe that many teachers nearing retirement will bring their retirement forward. This move also has the potential to improve teaching standards, but it will be up to individual schools to hold teachers to the Proficient Teacher standards and will need incredible support to help or dismiss teachers that do not meet those basic standards.

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