‘Unethical’ to admit low-score teacher trainees

Tertiary institutions have an ethical duty to ensure students they enrol are fit to study, former vice-chancellor says.

Steven Schwartz questions the enrolment of low-score students to teaching courses. Picture: Britta Campion

A former schools adviser to the government and past vice-­chancellor at three universities has expressed alarm at low entry standards into teaching courses, following revelations that students with tertiary admission ranks significantly below average were attracting university offers.

Professor Steven Schwartz, who recently retired as chairman of the Australian Curriculum, ­Assessment and Reporting Authority, said tertiary institutions had an ethical duty to ensure students they enrolled were fit to study.

“I don’t believe that it’s ethical for universities to admit students into a degree if the university doesn’t believe they are reasonably capable of completing that degree,” said Professor Schwartz, a former vice-chancellor at Macquarie and Murdoch universities and president of Brunel Univer­sity in England. “How can you justify taking those students in?”

His comments come as the Australian Council of Deans of Education has privately conceded students with low scores have been accepted into teaching courses — while hitting out at “politically motivated” publicity.

In an email sent last week, the council’s executive director, David Templeman, said he was “unimpressed” by the way university offers and acceptances data had been “manipulated” to “sensationalise a story”.

“ACDE understands the data used … related to offers … but not actual admissions,” he wrote in the email, which is referred to in today’s Menzies Research Centre’s Water Cooler newsletter and has been seen by this newspaper.

The data, released by the federal Department of Education ­following questions to a Senate estimates hearing in May, is understood to be based on figures from tertiary admission centres. It reveals that, despite a push to raise the quality of teaching candidates, most universities had offered students with below-average Australian Tertiary Admission Ranks a teaching place this year.

In NSW, the University of Wollongong had made offers to two students with ATARs below 30 of a possible 99.95, while in South Australia, Flinders University had made offers to three students with ATARs below 40.

In Victoria, students with ATARs of 17.9, 19.8 and 21.3 were offered positions by Victoria University, one of several institutions to have introduced a Bachelor of Education Studies that has no minimum ATAR requirement. The course is promoted as an ­alternative pathway into teaching and does not provide teacher registration unless students transfer to the Bachelor of Education.

According to the data, seven Victorian universities had ­accepted students with ATARs well below the state’s minimum entry rank of 65 (to rise to 70 next year), about the average ATAR. The Victorian Institute of Teaching said it would investigate universities’ compliance with the state framework for students entering initial teacher programs.

Menzies Research Centre executive director Nick Cater said it was concerning that universities were enrolling teaching candidates with low scores, given many would not go on to graduate or ­become teachers.

An ACDE spokeswoman declined to comment but pointed to a previous statement highlighting reasons a low-scoring student could be offered a teaching place, such as hardship consideration.