Teaching is no place for dunces

George Bernard Shaw’s pithy phrase “He who can, does; he who cannot, teaches” has never been as relevant in Australia after 20 years of promised classroom reforms by both major parties, federal and state. Education editor Natasha Bita’s revelation that 15 universities recently admitted teaching undergraduates with an Australian Tertiary Admission Rank below 60 will horrify parents. That includes the University of Tasmania enrolling a student with an ATAR of 39.55 on the recommendation of a school principal. A year ago, the Australian Institute of Teaching and School Leadership announced it was establishing a “quality oversight board” for teaching degrees to raise the bar on entry rules.

While the student with a 30-something ranking is the worst of the bunch (near the bottom of a system in which the lowest reported rank is 30), the general standards are disappointing. The latest figures on the Tertiary Admission Centre’s database show RMIT enrolled a student with a rank of 50.3 into primary teaching, Canberra University one with 51.9 and the Australian Catholic University a student with 56.4 for primary and secondary teaching. Even Monash, one of the elite Group of Eight universities, admitted a teaching student with a rank of 60. It told The Australian that the federal government has an ATAR cut-off of 70 for entering teaching degrees but that can be reduced to 60 under circumstances such as sociocultural or financial disadvantage.

Most law students, in contrast, need a rank of 90 or higher, with a minimum of 82.25 for commerce. Perhaps the low bar explains why half of teaching students drop out of their degrees, incurring pointless HECS debts. The situation is not in their interests, those of taxpayers or especially in the interests of the children these students would teach if they graduated. If necessary, governments should use funding mechanisms to take a stand.