Teaching bid for top students faces crisis

Australia’s schooling system is facing an ‘unprecedented’ crisis, a leading education academic has warned.

University of Sydney academic Rachel Wilson.

Australia’s schooling system is facing an “unprecedented” crisis in its ability to attract “high-calibre” candidates to the teaching profession, undermining a ­nationwide bid to arrest deteriorating standards, a leading education academic has warned.

In a strongly worded submission to a federal inquiry into the status of the teaching profession, University of Sydney education expert Rachel Wilson describes the decline in entry standards to teaching courses as “deeply concerning”, highlighting the continuing admission of school leavers with low academic achievement and a lack of transparency around the academic achievements of about one-in three who were offered places.

“Attracting high-ability students to (initial teacher education) is a perennial challenge, but the extent of this challenge is now unprecedented,” Dr Wilson said. “Current arrangements produce a vicious cycle in which ­diminishing academic standards feed back into schools.”

The parliamentary inquiry into teaching, requested last year by Education Minister Dan Tehan, comes as the latest data on initial teacher education confirmed that Australia is failing to meet the international benchmark for entry into teaching courses: that entrants be in the top 30 per cent of their age cohort in regards to academic achievement.

A report released in December from the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership revealed that 40 per cent of secondary school leavers who were admitted in 2016 on the basis of their Australian Tertiary Entrance Rank had an ATAR of less than 70. That had risen from 30 per cent a decade earlier. Further to that, 6 per cent — more than 300 students — achieved an ATAR ­between 30 and 50.

The admission of lower-achieving school leavers comes despite lower ATARs being generally associated with a lower completion rate. The AITSL report said fewer than half the students with an ATAR of 50 or less had completed their teaching degrees six years after starting.

Dr Wilson said although some measures had been taken to boost teaching standards, including NSW’s requirement of a minimum three Band 5 HSC scores to study teaching, as well as the ­introduction of a national literacy and numeracy test for teaching graduates, there was a lack of data to assess their effectiveness.

She said the issue was the high degree of school leavers being ­accepted into teaching degrees on factors other than the ATAR, such as interviews or letters of recommendation provided by secondary school principals. In 2016, that figure was 31 per cent, meaning state and commonwealth education authorities had no ­record of the previous academic attainment of almost one-third of potential teachers entering university degrees that year.

Dr Wilson told The Australian the federal government needed to take action to boost standards, beginning with demanding greater disclosure of the academic achievements of teaching candidates, including their performance at school, and in specific subjects areas, particularly ­English and maths.