Anonymous #311

Submitter information

Name

Anonymous #311

Where are you located?

New South Wales

What type of area do you live in?

Metropolitan

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

Yes

Which sector do you work in?

Tertiary

What is your occupation?

Professor of Education

Elevating the profession

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

Strongly agree

Would you like to provide feedback about these actions?

1.Essential given the sustained derisive campaigns that have come to dominate reporting of education in some media and non-government organisations. Focus on First Nations, rural and remote, ECE, STEM, inclusive is appropriate but leaves most teachers in a grey zone. Mainstream teachers are the backbone of the profession. Increased teacher workloads due to COVID disruptions compounded distress for teachers as front line workers during the pandemic. Not feeling respected exacerbated this stress. The crucial work that teachers do to enable young people in all contexts to articulate and work strategically towards their future aspirations needs to be acknowledged.
Ministers of Education should check their messaging about teachers. It is impossible to run a positive campaign on one hand while disparaging teachers on the other. Also consider how the attacks on teachers of the NSW Legislative Council Education Committee are poisoning public discourse.
The strategy should be explicit that ‘stakeholders’ include teacher unions and professional associations who are closer to teachers than many other stakeholders.

2.&3.Worthy but insignificant strategies if public disparagement continues to be the default. Identifying individual heroic teachers risks obscuring the collaborative elements of professional educators. They could become promotional campaigns for the for-profit school sector. Categories would need to be created to represent the segregated and unevenly resourced sectors of schooling in Australia. Mechanisms for awards for Australian Teacher of the Year are also of concern. Will they be for teachers who have delivered high NAPLAN results or other simplistic performance measures? They need to be complex, contextual and authentic. OA are awarded for outstanding service/contributions/outcomes over and above what a person might do in their day job. While many educators are community spirited, this does not seem suitable for a key government strategy to boost the public profile of the profession.

4. Worthy strategy to foreground PL and mentoring that experienced teachers engage in, but already available in NPST. Why aren’t more qualified teachers applying now

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.

Somewhat agree

Would you like to provide feedback about these actions?

5.Additional CSP places should also include postgraduate further education e.g. in inclusive education, STEM and other priority areas. Also consider knock-on costs e.g. for professional experience supervision in schools. How will an increase in quantity sit alongside increase in quality of other strategies?

6.Appropriate. Scholarship schemes existed decades ago and also guaranteed employment at the end of the period of study. Precariousness employment pathways post-Initial teacher education continue to be a disincentive. Also how will these people be incentivised to work in public and comprehensive schools, rather than more advantaged schools. Check existing schemes such as NETDS, NEXUS etc. Consider how ‘best and brightest’ can be unpacked and understood. It risks sounding like a slogan targeted at media headlines rather than nuanced response to the complexity of teacher supply issues.

7.Two existing programs are currently federally funded with HATP funding (Teach4Australia & Nexus). Expand to pilot other innovative schemes that have an explicit focus on equity and inclusion (eg.NETDS network). This action is appropriate, however how will high quality midcareer professionals be attracted if conditions are unappealing?

8.Specific schemes described seem promising and well-tailored to areas of need. Investment in existing models focused on equity could also be extended.

9.Importing teachers has been a periodic strategy for plugging workforce holes in Australian education systems since the 1970s. The most recent NSW scheme demonstrates its flaws as it cannot compensate at scale for the malaise in the workforce. However this is a worthy component of a multifaceted approach. Selection of people for the scheme needs to be targeted and appropriate: high IELTs scores & supportive mentoring of overseas teachers into local contexts.

Please note: this section on teacher supply should be reviewed with regard to the excellent research already available.

Lampert, J., McPherson A., Burnett, B. & Armour, D. (August, 2021). Research into initiatives to prepare and supply a workforce for Hard-to-staff schools. Canberra: DESE

Strengthening Initial Teacher Education (ITE)

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

Somewhat agree

Would you like to provide feedback about these actions?

10.Items listed as potential strategies seem to anticipate the outcomes of review that is not yet complete. The dot point ‘Improving postgraduate ITE’ needs to be careful about what it means by ‘improving’. Improvement has often meant packing more mandatory content and accountabilities into ITE and further diffusing courses. Increasing course time is allocated to preparing ITE students for high stakes testing and assessments are reorganised as performances of the NPSTs. Reducing university coursework time in favour of embedded internships in situ in schools is risky for early career teachers until consistently high-quality practicum experiences can be guaranteed, centrally funded and thoroughly supported.

11.Merit is contingent on how ‘skills, expertise and prior learning’ that are commensurate with teaching are understood. For people who have been actively involved in teaching with adults, youth and children in non-school secular contexts, or workplaces this could be relevant if carefully documented and verified.

12.The gulf in the workforce of First nations teachers is a long-standing disgrace in Australian education. This dot point mentions the 2011-2016 MATSITI strategy that was terminated by the previous government despite the recommendation that it be continued. Revitalising this scheme could be a starting point for what needs to be a multifaceted strategy that centres voice and treaty, and that actualises the commitments of the Alice Springs Mparntwe Education Declaration.
Aboriginal organisations have always led the way in this space, for example with the pioneering work of the National Aboriginal Education Committee (1977-89) and its campaign for 1000 Aboriginal teachers in schools by 1990. No progress will be made on developing workforce unless First Nations Australians are given proper voice, respect and authority through existing and new entities, in consultation with First Nations leaderships in universities.

Investment in First Nations language initiatives is essential and overdue. All students in Australian schools, regardless of their cultural background, should have opportunity learn, or learn about, local Indigenous languages.

Maximising the time to teach

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

Strongly agree

Would you like to provide feedback about these actions?

15. The initiatives that are listed as examples seem promising. It appears to enhance teachers’ professionalism with its prioritising of ‘teach, plan, collaborate’. Reduction in excess administration and streamlined reporting are both welcomed. Teachers’ non-contact time in school is an important resource for planning and collaboration. These professional responsibilities are at the heart of teachers’ work and their capacities to respond effectively to their students’ needs.
All teachers acknowledge that they work beyond the minimum contact hours of the timetabled school day, however it is the nature, quality and focus of that work as well as its volume that is contentious. Some organisations have proposed that externally planned generic units of work and lesson plans would free up teachers’ time to teach, however this would be a dangerous move likely to diminish the professional skills and capabilities of teachers.
Note that the recommendations of the recently released and contentious NSW Parliamentary committee report on teachers’ shortages are diametrically opposed to these sorts of strategies.

16. The recent AERO Report Writing indicates that that National Literacy Learning Progressions need revision. This should be attended to. The pace of curriculum reform that ACARA has imposed on the profession has been exhausting and excessive for schools and needs to be slowed.
More broadly, continuing to develop the expertise and capacity of professionals situated inside schools is a more powerful and effective strategy, than dropping in resources without support to implement them. The Writing in Secondary program (NSW) is an excellent example of a project that is creating sustainable pedagogical change, through a balance of quality evidence-based resources and PL, and human resourcing inside schools to translate these into practice that fits the context and needs of the school. While the Progressions have been used as a tool to monitor student progress within the project, the WiS initiative was not designed to implement the Progressions per se but rather to improve the writing pedagogies in classrooms to support curriculum in KLAs.

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?

Would you like to provide feedback about these actions?

19.Essential. I'm shocked that it has not been possible to disaggregate this data previously.

20. Essential. Furthermore, employment patterns and pathways for new graduates need to also be collected – particularly regarding precarity of employment conditions (i.e. casual vs contract, permanent). Graduates who are casually employed become deskilled in their specialisations and more likely to be teaching out of field.

22. This may have potential, particularly for already experienced teachers. Pandemic conditions exacerbated existing shortages and fast-tracked provisional registration was enabled for ITE students. This should be carefully considered. Timing and conditions of provisional registration need to be appropriate. For example, it would be undesirable if provisional registration was granted before an ITE student had undertaken any school placements. How will they be supported and mentored whilst they have provisional registration? The risk is that an even less experienced cohort of unqualified teachers would cluster in hard-to-staff disadvantaged schools. Or they could form a roving army of ill equipped casual teachers to plug day-to-day gaps who are simultaneously distracted from the rigorous preparation to teach required of them in their university studies. Language is confusing as ‘provisional’ and ‘conditional’ have different meanings in different states, and with different employers.

23. While more data may need to be collected on this phenomenon in pandemic conditions, there is an extensive body of high quality research on this. Some has been government funded via the ARC (e.g. Keeping the best LP130100830, UniSA). Data and knowledge sharing seems more important than seeking out yet more data.
A comprehensive synthesis of existing qualitative and qualitative research over last decade or so needs to be developed. Qualitative case studies should form part of the analysis to provide richer insights than those available from quantitative data sources.
Structural components of teachers’ working conditions are all important levers that can beinvestigated for their potential to attract and retain teachers for longer in the profession.

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 agree

Would you like to provide feedback about these actions?

24. Increased permanency is an essential prerequisite for a secure and highly skilled profession. Respect for professional career pathways has been abandoned by large employers for the short term economic hit provided by casual workforce. The WA LEAP initiative seems to promise capacity to refresh mid-career teachers and increase expertise. Initiatives in other states (e.g. NSW Quality Teaching Practice, in the Teaching Quality & Impact Directorate on NSW Education) offering substantial and extended professional learning might be leveraged in this way.

25. This strategy has considerable potential and is widely needed across the profession. Currently it is likely fragmented and localised so guidelines for consistency would be appropriate.

26.Essential and long overdue. As First Nations students are likely to be in most schools, in varying numbers, this should be expected of all teachers in Australian schools. It should not be considered a niche professional development component limited to some schools and regions. Considerable research into these issues has been undertaken over recent decades, much of it by highly regarded Indigenous scholars, and now needs to be acted upon.
Teachers’ unions are likely to be supportive of this as an equity focused strategy.

27. This is essential as HALT (Lead teacher) procedures for accreditation have been excessive and unappealing.

28. This appears to target one institution and program. Micro-credentials is vague.

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Note that this Draft National Teacher Workforce Plan appears to be blind to structural inequities that are baked into Australian education. While this might mollify some commentators and stakeholders, it is unlikely to redress some problems. School funding inequities have produced a highly stratified system and initiatives that appear to be sector-blind will potentially be taken advantage of by already advantaged schools.