FACULTY FOCUS
campusreview.com.au
Cashing in has consequences
Teacher education can be a lucrative
business for universities, but young
teachers may be paying the price.
By James Wells
U
niversities use education degrees
as cash cows and this partially
explains startling teacher attrition
rates, an education expert says.
Research from the Australian National
University shows 30 per cent to 50 per cent
of teachers quit the profession in the first
five years. The latest data also shows just
over 21,000 teachers – or 5.7 per cent of the
nationwide workforce – left in 2014.
Stephen Dinham, former national
president of the Australian College of
Educators and University of Melbourne
chair of teacher education, argues this is
due, in part, to how universities squeeze
money out of teacher education. This has
been going on since university places were
uncapped, Dinham argues.
“We’ve left it to the free market and
that’s not always the best way to go,” he
explains. “They can enrol as many at the
undergraduate level into teacher training
as they want. This becomes very important
when universities run into financial pressure,
so what we frequently see is too many
teachers being trained and probably too
many universities training teachers. The
effect of that is it drives standards down, but
also it leads to this oversupply problem …
and there are more entrants all the time.”
He adds that a lack of workforce planning
for the sector is compounding the problem.
Andrew Norton, Grattan Institute higher
education program director, agrees that
teacher education has grown rapidly since
the implementation of the demand-driven
system and is probably quite profitable for
universities. However, Norton says there
isn’t enough published data to confirm
Dinham’s statements.
“Nothing on the public record lets us
put precise numbers on profits by course,”
Norton says.
Meanwhile, Dinham says there are other
issues that contribute to teacher attrition.
These include the casualisation of the
teaching workforce, the variability in the
amount of support new teachers receive,
and roles teachers are expected to fulfil
outside of their profession.
“Teachers are expected to deal with
a whole range of social problems that
society itself is either unwilling or unable
to address,” Dinham says. “That [involves
dealing with] behavioural problems, health
and even basic stuff like manners. If these
things aren’t provided by the family, then
teachers and schools are in the firing line.
“Also, [many] students have been taught
math by someone who’s not trained as
a math teacher… and being taught science
by somebody who’s not a trained science
teacher. If you’re a beginning teacher and
you’re asked to teach outside the area
in which you’re trained, that’s obviously
putting pressure on you yet again, and
that ‘out-of-field’ teaching is worse in
government schools, low-SES schools,
country and regional schools – those sorts
of areas that we would generally say in
some cases are disadvantaged.”
Marcela Slepica, clinical services director
at AccessEAP – a corporate psychology
not-for-profit – says all these factors cause
teachers stress and anxiety. She suggests
getting the more experienced teachers to
mentor the new ones.
“Introducing a mentoring program into
schools … would be helpful, especially in
those first five years of teachers’ careers,”
Slepica says. “[This is] so they don’t feel
overwhelmed and think, ‘This is not the job
for me.’“ ■
25