Teaching opportunity knocks for graduates

IT wasn't until Kimberley Louwrens tutored biology students that she realised she wanted to tackle educational disadvantage.

IT wasn't until Kimberley Louwrens started tutoring Year 12 biology students that she realised she wanted to tackle educational disadvantage by teaching those who didn't have the opportunities she had.

The 22-year-old will today start work at Katherine High School in the Northern Territory under a Gillard government program allowing university graduates to work in disadvantaged schools.

Under the Teach for Australia program, participants spend two years teaching in their area of expertise as they study for a post-graduate diploma of education.

With about half of Katherine High School's 630 students being Aboriginal, Ms Louwrens will teach environmental science to a special class of female indigenous students in Years 7, 8 and 9. She will also teach Year 10 science.

"I studied a Master of Science in zoology and I didn't have any intentions of going into teaching," she told The Australian yesterday. "But during my masters I started to do a lot of tutoring. Some were from lower SES (socioeconomic status) backgrounds.

"I started to realise how disadvantaged they were. I hadn't realised how big an issue that was. I love teaching. I love science. I love transferring that knowledge to others."

The $22 million program is one of several designed by Julia Gillard to improve educational standards by lifting teacher quality. Graduates are put through an intensive six-week training course before they are placed in a school.

Sally Pannifex, 32, also placed at Katherine High, said the graduates had gone through a crash course in behaviour management, lesson planning and leadership workshops.

"A lot of the kids are coming in from the nearby communities and a lot of those communities don't have ideal services; a lot of houses have overcrowding and a lot of kids are coming in with an inadequate breakfast," she said.

The Teach for Australia program has come under attack from some quarters, including the Australian Education Union, which has highlighted figures showing that only 25 of the 45 graduates who began the program in 2010 had opted to remain in the classroom.

But a spokesman for Teach for Australia yesterday said that 70 per cent of graduates went on to stay in the broader teaching profession. Ms Pannifex said she would like to remain in the classroom after she finishes the two-year course.