Lifting the Status of Teaching

This is a submission to the 2019 Parliamentary Inquiry into the Status of Teaching in Australia

A major threat to the status of teaching and the future quality of Australia’s education system is the recent and current failure to address the recruitment problem. Compared with high- achieving countries, Australia’s arrangements for assuring the attractiveness of teaching as a career and the quality of future teachers are weak. Concerted and broad-based policies designed to lift the status of teaching and ensure that sufficient numbers of academically successful students are recruited to meet the growing demand should be a national priority.

Australia’s governments must meet their responsibility to ensure that teaching is an attractive profession that can compete with other professions for the best graduates and ensure that all entrants to teacher education are ready to cope successfully with a demanding professional preparation program. This means that salaries and career opportunities for teachers who attain high standards will have to rise substantially. This, however, will only gain the necessary long term government and public support if the profession meets its responsibility to provide a rigorous national system for identifying and certifying teachers who attain high standards of practice.