Education Minister Jason Clare urges school leavers to become teachers, not lawyers, bankers

A federal MP has made a huge call for school-leavers to pursue a different career path than law or finance, amid new figures revealing undergraduate teaching offers are soaring.

Education Minister Jason Clare has called on more school-leavers to pursue teaching instead of becoming “a lawyer or a banker,” with latest data revealing rates of students applying for teaching degrees have surged by hundreds.

New data released by the government on Wednesday reported rates of people applying to student undergraduate courses in education have increased by 7 per cent in the past year, with offers to students increasing by 14 per cent.

Between 2024 offers applications had increased by 843 from 11,816 to 12,659, while offers made to students were boosted by 1233, from 8672 to 9905.

Education Minister Jason Clare urged more school leavers to pursue teaching. Picture: NewsWire/ Martin Ollman

Previous modelling by the federal Department of Education suggested there would be a shortfall of about 4100 secondary school teachers by 2025, with the workforce quitting the profession following Covid.

Mr Clare said Australia needed more teachers and urged young people to consider the career and highlighted state and federal investment into the profession.

“Being a teacher is the most important job in the world, and we don’t have enough of them,” he said.

“The Liberals ripped the guts out of public school funding and under them, the teacher shortage crisis got worse. We’re now starting to see this turn around.

“I want more young people to leap out of high school and want to become a teacher, rather than a lawyer or a banker.”

Rates of university students applying to teaching degrees have increased by. Picture: NewsWire/ Jeremy Piper

Mr Clare praised the co-operation between state and territory government in boosting the figures, through reductions in admin workload and increases in pay.

In NSW, teachers secured a 10 per cent pay rise over three year in 2024, while public school educators in Victoria are also set to renegotiate their wages this year.

Federally, he said the government was “tackling the teacher workforce shortage with teaching scholarships, reforms to teacher training and paid prac for teaching students”.

From July this year, students in eligible courses teaching, nursing and midwifery, and social work will be able to access a stipend of $319.50 a week.

On Friday, Anthony Albanese also confirmed Victoria and South Australia had signed onto the Better and Fairer Schools funding packages, which will increase Commonwealth funding to 22.5 per cent of the Schooling Resource Standard.

Queensland and NSW have continued to hold out, calling on the Commonwealth to chip in an extra 2.5 per cent to bring its total to 25 per cent.

However the Prime Minister said conversations with the straggler states continue to be “constructive”.

Originally published as Education Minister Jason Clare urges school leavers to become teachers, not lawyers, bankers