One Year Entry to Teaching will Boost Numbers, Briefly

NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet and Minister for Education & Early Education Sarah Mitchell have announced that "aspiring teachers in NSW will soon be able to enter the classroom after completing a one-year postgraduate course."

And experts agree NSW's "major shake-up to pathways into teaching for aspiring teachers" through this expedited route will provide a brief boost to teacher numbers, if only briefly.

The program’s final form is still to be nailed down, however, Professor Kim Beswick, Head of the School of Education at UNSW Sydney says that while the fine detail is forthcoming, a rapid entry program can work and that current masters’ programs already allow for aspiring teachers to find their way into classrooms in a year.

“There is a lot of detail that we don’t have at this stage. Under current arrangements, UNSW MTeach students complete their intensive program in 1.33 years and can teach at the end of 1 year,” Prof Beswick says.

“Shorter programs will remove a barrier for some prospective teachers and hence may increase teacher supply. It will produce a larger than usual number of graduating teachers at the end of the first year of implementing 1 year programs when these students graduate and the last of the 2 year cohorts also graduate. After that single year of increased graduates there would be no change other than possibly more people choosing to teach.”

Several programs now running seek to integrate teacher training with work in schools and using students to assist is a way that some of the burden on teachers could be lifted, if done correctly.

“Employing prospective teachers in paraprofessional - i.e. non-teaching roles - in schools is already possible and a great option that could be used more systematically. It should remain an option regardless of the length of programs. Don’t forget, many teachers qualify via 4-year Bachelors programs. These prospective teachers don’t have a prior degree.”

But a better way of increasing the number of teachers would be to make the prospect of becoming a teacher more appealing.

“Ultimately the teaching profession needs to be more attractive. A raft of things including pay, public and political rhetoric that imply teachers are to blame for various of society’s ills, endless hoops to jump through, high administrative burden, lack of respect for teachers’ professional expertise, … all make the profession unattractive.

“A capable Year 12 student who can do well in maths for example has options that are much higher status and more highly paid – medicine, business, engineering … Some people are committed to being teachers regardless of the conditions but we cannot run a system on altruism,” Prof Beswick says.