The cost of attracting high-performing teaching students

High achievers could be tempted into the ranks of the nation’s school teachers with more money, $80,000 more than teachers currently get, while high achieving school-leavers should receive $10,000-a-year scholarships if they take up teaching says the Grattan Institute.

It will require additional funding, much more additional funding from ScoMo though, so existing arrangements won’t be effected says the AEU’s Corrina Haythorpe.

“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.” 

Haythorpe said it was important that education departments and the teaching profession work together to make teaching a more attractive option for potential Initial Teacher Education students.

“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,” Haythorpe 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 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,” Haythorpe said.

“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.”