Pressure on universities to raise the entry level for teaching courses

Those who wish to undertake a teaching degree may well have to brush up on their literacy skills if they hope to succeed.

Deputy Leader of the Opposition, Tanya Plibersek is for a rise in the ATAR. Picture Gary Ramage

Pressure is mounting on universities to raise the bar for entry to undergraduate teaching courses, with former NSW Education Minister Adrian Piccoli urging the states and territories to consider following Victoria’s lead by increasing the minimum ATAR needed for enrolment.

In the wake of revelations literacy and numeracy standards among pre-service teachers fell last year, Mr Piccoli, who is now the director of the Gonski Institute of Education at the University of New South Wales, said tough measures to ensure that only top academic performers were accepted into teaching courses should be considered.

“Absolutely, I believe that should happen,” said Mr Piccoli, who introduced NSW’s policy requiring students to achieve three Band 5 scores, including in English, in the HSC to study to be a teacher.

Victoria has gone one step further, increasing the minimum ATAR for undergraduate teaching courses to 70 next year, up from 65.

South Australia signalled that it was watching closely for outcomes from the Victorian policy.

“This got talked about at the ministerial council meetings quite regularly and everyone seemed to agree that there should be a minimum ATAR for acceptable to a teaching course but not on what the minimum should be,” Mr Piccoli said.

However, Education Minister Simon Birmingham, who was scathing of some universities’ results in the latest literacy and numeracy test for prospective teachers, declined to commit to raising the issue at the next Education Council meeting.

“When universities accept students with low ATARs they need to take the responsibility to skill up those people to meet the literacy and numeracy benchmarks the Turnbull Government has set,” Senator Birmingham said.

As The Australian reported earlier, 19 out of 52 tertiary institutions had more than 10 per cent of students fail a component of the literacy and numeracy test introduced in 2016 to bolster the quality teaching graduates. Meeting a minimum standard, which has been likened to a Year 9 level, is a requirement of the registration to teach.

Victoria University in Melbourne was one of the worst performers, with 27 per cent of students failing literacy and 24 per cent failing numeracy.

The median ATAR of those offered places in two of its initial teacher education courses this year was 58.45 and 56.65 respectively. The lowest ATAR of a student offered a place was 45.3.

According to the university, once raw ATARs were adjusted to account for special circumstances, such as social, economic or geographic disadvantage, every student accepted into an education course had an adjusted ATAR of 65. Adjustments are permitted under the government’s policy.

Opposition Education spokeswoman Tanya Plibersek also called for tougher barriers to entry to teach.

“If the basics of literacy and numeracy elude you, I don’t think you should you be teaching the next generation,” she said.

“Labor’s very clear, we ... believe that we should be drawing our teachers from those in the top 30 per cent of academic aptitude.”

South Australian Minister for Education John Gardner said the recently-elected Marshall Government had committed to its own literacy and numeracy tests for teaching graduates.

“I understand tougher ATAR requirements in Victoria have been brought in this year and will be in place for 2019,” he said, “so we would be interested to see how that new arrangement works in that state.”

Victoria’s opposition education spokesman Tim Smith said the minimum ATAR requirement was sound policy but appeared too easy to get around. As a result, Victorian students were stagnating, he said.