Content reboot for teacher training

Drastic changes to teacher training will force universities to cover ‘core content’, such as reading and mathematics, in reforms ordered by the nation’s education ministers this week.

Universities will be forced to improve teacher training. Picture: Istock

Drastic changes to teacher training will force universities to cover “core content”, such as teaching children to read and master mathematics, in reforms ordered by the nation’s education ministers this week.

Amendments to state and territory accreditation standards for teaching degrees, to be revealed on Wednesday, will give universities until the end of 2025 to ensure that every trainee teacher knows how to teach children to read and write.

Step-by-step teaching techniques – many of them based on old-school methods taught in teachers’ colleges 50 years ago – will instruct trainee teachers to plan a sequence of lessons.

Explicit instruction – which involves the teacher explaining, practising and checking students’ understanding – will become mandatory in teaching degrees.

Trainee teachers must also learn how children’s brains develop through early childhood to the teenage years so as to understand how students learn best at different ages.

They will be instructed to avoid the trend of “self-directed learning’’ for students who are learning a new concept or subject.

The core content will force university education faculties to focus on teaching explicit ­instruction, with clearly structured step-by-step content and “scaffolding’’ to support children as they learn.

Trainees will be shown how to create “worked examples’’ during lessons, and to design summative assessments that measure students against a benchmark.

They will be taught to “provide feedback as learning is taking place that is specific, honest, constructive and clear’’.

To help students who are struggling, teachers will be shown how to “re-teach concepts, scaffold, or correct misconceptions’’.

All new teachers must know how to teach children to read and write through the use of phonics to sound out letters and words, and understand the mathematical concepts of numbers, algebra, geometry, measurement, statistics and probability.

The reforms to make teacher training more robust were recommended in a review of teacher training by University of Sydney vice-chancellor Mark Scott, and are designed to prevent half of trainee teachers dropping out of “woke” teaching degrees.

Federal Education Minister Jason Clare has warned the states there’ll be ‘no blank cheques’ for school funding. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Tertius Pickard

An Institute of Public Affairs analysis of 3713 teaching degrees offered by 37 Australian universities recently found that only 10 weeks of a typical four-year degree were dedicated to teaching children literacy and numeracy.

One-third of all subjects related to “wokeness and political activism’’, with turgid lectures about identity politics, decolonisation and social justice.

Education ministers signed off on the unprecedented intervention at a meeting on Monday, when they also released a report on the next National School Reform Agreement.

Federal Education Minister Jason Clare on Tuesday told the states he would not write “blank cheques’’, doubling down on his demands they agree to reforms such as small-group tutoring as a condition of extra funding.

Pledging to “level the playing field’’ between rich and poor schools, Mr Clare said he would insist on national education reforms, tied to funding in bilateral agreements to be negotiated next year. “There are no blank cheques here,’’ he said on Tuesday. “We need to make sure that we tie that funding to the sorts of things that we know work – like catch-up tutoring (to) help children who fall behind to catch up and to finish school.

“We want to make sure this money works, and that we invest it in the sort of things that are going to help our children in the areas they need it most.

“Unless we implement the sort of reforms that are going to help children who fall behind to catch up and finish school, we will be doing a disservice not just to them but to the whole country.’’

The Australian on Tuesday revealed that state ministers had baulked at performance targets recommended by the NSRA review. They warned that they could not find enough teachers to meet the requirements for catch-up tutoring, which is already provided in Victoria and will begin in NSW next year.

Mr Clare is championing pay rises for teachers, with “financial incentives’’ for the most experienced teachers to work in dis­advantaged communities.

Governments are squabbling over who should pay for the $6.8bn a year shortfall in needs-based schools funding that was recommended by business leader David Gonski a decade ago.