policy & reform
campusreview.com.au
$1.6b for top teachers
Report suggests strategies to lure
high achievers into teaching.
By Wade Zaglas
T
he latest Grattan Institute report,
Attracting High Achievers to Teaching,
is proposing a $1.6 billion reform
package to “double the number of high
achievers who choose to become teachers,
and increase the average ATAR of teaching
graduates to 85, within the next decade”.
In addition to offering $10,000-a-year
scholarships to encourage students into
the profession, some teachers will be able
make $80,000 a year more under the role
of Master Teachers. Instructional Specialists
would earn $40,000 extra a year.
Education deans are keen to make
teaching more attractive by encouraging
students with ATAR scores over 80 to
consider a teaching career, although they
say “the proposed reforms address only
one part of what is needed to arrest the
large, continuing drop in applications to
study teaching”.
The Australian Council of Deans of
Education (ACDE) president, Professor Tania
Aspland, said: “The proposals in the Grattan
Institute report will help make teaching
more attractive to higher academic
achievers, who place particular emphasis
on the pay, intellectual challenge and
promotional paths of potential careers.”
While Aspland believes lifting ATARs
will see improvements in the classroom,
she warns it is no panacea, and “personal
attributes” have to be part of the equation.
“While we see clear value in inspiring
many high achievers into the teaching
profession, the report acknowledges the
need for desirable personal attributes to
accompany academic performance. It also
points out that many great teachers may
have had ATARs below 80.
“Interestingly, many Australian universities
have also discounted the importance of
the ATAR, with a recent report showing
only one in four students enters teacher
education based on ATAR alone.”
The ACDE has formed a partnership
with Swinburne University to create a
virtual roundtable discussion, called Future
Teachers Talk, with the aim “to attract more
secondary school leavers intro teaching”.
Aspland added: “There is clearly a need
to address the fact that far fewer higher
achievers choose teaching compared
to 40 years ago, when teacher salaries
for women were above other female
professionals and, for men, were on par
with other professions.
“Today teacher salaries are 8 per cent less
than the average of female professionals
and 16 per cent below the average of other
male professions. Pay scales also flatten
within 10 years of graduation for teachers
who choose to stay in the classroom and
then fall further and further behind other
professions throughout a teacher’s career.
“The Grattan Institute proposal of
$10,000 cash scholarships, better career
pathways with two new categories of
teachers with adequate pay, and better
marketing of the teaching profession
certainly has merit,” she said.
The Australian Education Union (AEU)
supports the initiatives, including that
highly accomplished teachers should
earn $80,000 a year more than they
currently do, and school leavers should
receive $10,000 scholarships to take up
teaching degrees.
AEU federal president Correna Haythorpe
said: “Australia must present teaching as
an attractive profession to high achievers.
Any initiatives which help to attract and
retain academically successful students
into teaching are worthy of consideration.
However, we do not support the position
taken that if these initiatives were
implemented that they should be funded
from current funding provisions.
“It must be made perfectly clear
to education ministers at all levels of
government that any new initiatives must,
under all circumstances, be resourced via
new sources of funding, not redirected
from already-scarce existing recurrent
funding for public schools.”
She added the teaching shortage was
so dire that, in 2018, 697 principals were
surveyed as part of the AEU’s annual State
of Our Schools (SooS) survey. It found
424 schools (61 per cent) suffered teacher
shortages last year.
Haythorpe also highlighted the
importance of status leading to better
salaries and less churn in the profession.
“Numerous international studies since
the 1970s have consistently shown that
higher teacher salaries, relative to those of
other comparable professions, increase the
likelihood of highly performing secondary
students becoming teachers, and reduce
long-term rates of attrition,” she said.
“To attract high-achieving students
into teaching, it is absolutely necessary
to invest in appropriate salary and reward
structures. The report’s recommendation to
offer $10,000 cash scholarships to high-
achieving secondary graduates is certainly
worthy of broader consideration as a way
to both improve Initial Teacher Education
(ITE) entry standards and increase the
attractiveness of teaching to high-achievers.
“The introduction of career pathways
such as the Institutional Specialist and
Master Teacher need a much broader
consideration by the profession and
governments, as there are industrial
ramifications to these proposals.
“As this Grattan Institute report confirms,
the attractiveness of teaching to high-
performing secondary school graduates
has been in decline for at least four
decades, and teacher shortages across a
range of subject areas have now reached
crisis point.
“However, it is important to note that
without detailed workforce planning, we do
not actually have a clear picture of where
the workforce demands for the future
are. In some states, we have a surplus of
teaching staff for particular subjects and
sectors and in others, shortages.
“It is imperative that comprehensive
workforce planning is undertaken across
the states and territories. This will provide
more focused and better resourced
delivery of ITE and maximise the attraction
and retention of high-achieving entrants
and graduates in the teacher workforce,”
Haythorpe said. ■
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