Push to stop wannabe teacher dropouts

A spike in teaching student dropouts has universities grappling with ways to retain pupils amid a looming teacher shortage.

Universities are grappling with ways to retain trainee teachers amid a looming shortage.

Teaching students who fail classroom placements or wait until the end of their degrees to sit mandatory tests are more likely to drop out of their course altogether, new data shows.

In a national study that is the first of its kind, Australian Catholic University (ACU) predicted more than 2200 students’ course trajectories by measuring their performance in major requirements against when they left their studies.

The data showed that students were most at risk of quitting their teaching degrees if they failed their professional classroom placements, or if they sat the LANTITE – a compulsory assessment prospective teachers must pass if they are to enter the profession – near the end of their degrees.

Amid the teacher shortage gripping the country, universities have installed targeted support for students during these “danger times” in a bid to retain as many new teachers as possible.

Lead researcher and ACU’s Institute for Learning Sciences and Teacher Education director Professor Claire Wyatt-Smith said universities could now understand the specific points at which they needed to work to retain teaching students.

“This research highlights the danger times for ITE (initial teacher education) separation that can be addressed with targeted interventions,” she said.

“We need to know who our students are from the beginning. We need to map their progress, and we need to support them on the way through.”

The federal government predicts a shortfall of about 4000 teachers across Australia by 2025.

The federal government predicts a shortfall of about 4000 teachers around Australia by 2025, but the most recent Australian Teacher Workforce Data, released on Tuesday, shows that the teaching workforce is not growing at a pace that will meet that demand.

Nationally, admissions into teaching courses and degree completion dropped 8 per cent and 17 per cent respectively between 2017 and 2020.

Federal Education Minister Jason Clare said an expert panel being assembled off the back of a round table discussion with the country’s education ministers and key stakeholders such as teachers and principals aimed to find ways to attract and support new teachers while retaining veteran staff.

“There are more kids going to school than ever before, and that’s a great thing, but there are fewer people going on to university to study teaching,” he said.

“One of the ways to help tackle this is at university – making sure more people studying teaching finish the degree and become teachers and that they are better prepared for the classroom.”

Other critical dropout factors included students completing multiple course assessments, such as the GTPA (Graduate Teacher Performance Assessment) or professional placement, at the same time.

Victorian Principals Association president Andrew Dalgleish said having teaching students spend more time in the classroom earlier in their degrees through more internship-style placements would help support them by the time they became full-time teachers and maintain a higher number of qualified teachers.

“Parents expect graduate teachers to walk into a classroom and perform like a 20 year veteran. Yet, if we have a graduate surgeon or a doctor, they go through a pretty solid internship before they pick a scalpel up,” he said.

Deakin University works with schools to pair pre-service teachers with on-site mentors during their placements and asks for student feedback early in their degrees, and students at risk of dropping out due to poor placement experience are relocated.

A Victoria University spokeswoman said the institution’s block model, in which students complete one unit every four weeks, allows for earlier intervention when a teaching student is struggling with course requirements.

Course progression and wellbeing of Master of Teaching students at the University of Melbourne are regularly evaluated throughout their degrees.

It is understood that almost 20 higher education institutions have expressed interest in ACU’s new modelling to know when their teaching students need the most support.