Conceived by the Coalition and delivered by Labor, fundamental reforms to teacher training prove the power of bipartisanship.
Our children, our economy and our society will benefit from the long-overdue fix to a root cause of failures in Australia’s education system.
The quality of teaching is every bit as important as the quantity of funding for schools.
Thanks to bipartisan policy, universities can no longer get away with delivering wishy-washy degrees for trainee teachers, who flail when they are thrown in the deep end of classroom teaching.
It beggars belief that so many teachers spent four years at university yet do not know the best way to teach children to read and write. Without a mastery of mathematics, how can teachers ensure their own students excel in maths?
Reforms to teaching degrees – endorsed by the nation’s education ministers and released by the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) – will do much to improve the pipeline of new teachers.
Core content, to be made mandatory in every education degree by the end of next year, will ensure new teachers are classroom ready.
They must all learn how to teach children to read, and to teach using the logical step-by-step method known as “explicit instruction’’.
It was former Coalition education minister Alan Tudge who launched a review of initial teacher education in 2021. To his credit, the new Labor Education Minister, Jason Clare, caught the ball, endorsed the reforms and convinced his state counterparts to sign off on the changes.
The change to teacher training shows that improving education doesn’t always cost truckloads of money.
Funding is important – but so too are a clear and high-quality curriculum, evidence-based teaching methods, and highly trained teachers with a mastery of their subject matter and affinity for children.
The federal government has offered to pour an extra $16bn into public schools over the next decade, but state and territory ministers are demanding twice as much.
NSW Education Minister Prue Car is doing more than any of her counterparts to fix problems, without waiting for a commonwealth cash splash. By banning mobile phones, sending school executives back into classrooms, handing teachers a generous pay rise and mandating explicit instruction methods, students can only benefit.
Governments must stop squabbling over who will pay for public services, and remember that it is the hardworking taxpayer who funds it all in the end. Children’s education must not be held hostage to political funding fights.
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