Time to get real about teaching

As Natasha Bita reported on Thursday, Acting Education Minister Stuart Robert has announced plans to require would-be teachers to meet basic standards of literacy and numeracy before they begin teacher training degrees. Mr Robert said one in 10 students completing these degrees failed the literacy and numeracy test that was now required to graduate. It may seem a sign of progress that making such a test a condition for entry into teacher training is not opposed by Labor, whose education spokeswoman Tanya Plibersek says students should pass a test in reading, writing and maths before they’re allowed to start a teaching degree.

But this mild bipartisanship obscures the seriousness of the reform challenge in teacher education, and the lack of ambition and energy in our politics on this question. In a sense, it hardly matters if innumerate or illiterate students are detected at the start or the finish of a university degree, especially a degree expected to launch a teacher. The real issue is that after years of talk about the greater prestige that should come with being a schoolteacher, after enormous increases in public funding, we are acknowledging that following years of compulsory schooling our system turns out an unacceptable number of young people who go on to the world of work or university with inadequate literacy or numeracy, or both. And sections of our higher education system only add to the problem. It shouldn’t be forgotten that early in the days of skilled migration, overseas students who graduated with an Australian degree did not have to show proficiency in professional English because it was assumed that completion of a higher education program in English was proof that they would be snapped up by our employers. The common element in university offerings geared to skilled migration visas and teacher training programs is that both have been vital sources of money for university administrations to draw on to fund other, more serious, activities.

The federal government has armed itself with the advice of an 18-month review of teacher training and has promoted some measures such as the Teach for Australia program to retrain people from a range of professions to lift standards in difficult to staff schools. But teacher education needs root-and-branch reform, and it will be opposed by the universities, teacher unions and some states.

The Coalition has given it up as too hard before. As for Labor, Ms Plibersek has sensibly shown some policy independence on teacher training but the Australian Education Union’s out-size power in her party would test any comprehensive reform. Let’s see what can be delivered.