Annual Conference of the Australian Council of Deans

G’day everyone.

I acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which the Conference is taking place today, and I pay my respects to elders, past and present.

I would also like to acknowledge:

•    President of the Australian Council of Deans of Education, Professor Michele Simons, and

•    Professor Iain Martin and thank Iain and Deakin University for hosting this important Conference

I am sorry I can’t be there in person but thank you so much for the opportunity to talk to you today.

I suspect you’ve heard me say it before, I think teaching is the most important job in the world.

And I suspect you know that to.

We don’t have enough teachers.

It’s a problem 10 years in the making, and it will take time to fix.

We need more people to want to be a teacher. More people to enrol in teaching and more people to complete the course. And more people to stick at it.

Paying teachers what they deserve, cutting back on paperwork and a healthy dose of respect, are all important.

Unlike my predecessors, you’ll never hear me calling our teachers duds, you’ll never hear me talking our teachers down. You’ll only hear me giving them a wrap.

This is an important job.

It’s a tough and complex job and it’s only getting more complex.

And that makes what you do more complex.

The Teacher Education Expert Panel Report I commissioned two years ago makes that clear.

It also found that we need to change how we teach beginning teachers.

It said that:

“There are great teacher education programs nationwide…but too many beginning teachers have reported that they felt they needed to be better equipped for the challenges they faced in the classroom on starting their teaching careers.”

The report recommended strengthening initial teacher education programs, including establishing and embedding core content and mandating it in national accreditation.

Things like teaching the fundamentals of reading, writing and maths and how to manage classroom behaviour and an understanding of why specific instructional practices work, and how to implement these practices.

Education Ministers have agreed in-principle to the report’s recommendations and work is underway to progress all 14 of its recommendations.

AITSL has developed the Australian Professional Experience Guidelines.

We’ve amended accreditation standards and procedures.

And next year, this core content must be embedded in all ITE programs.

To back this reform work, we have also established a $7 million fund to support universities to implement these changes.  

This initial investment will be followed by $1 million each year to support best practice in ITE delivery going forward.

We have also established the Initial Teacher Education Quality Assurance Oversight Board to improve the national consistency and quality of initial teacher education programs and their outcomes.

The Board is Chaired by Jenny Atta, who I know is presenting to you later on.

We also want more people mid-career to think about becoming a teacher.

To support this, we are tripling the number of participants entering into the High Achieving Teachers Program.

It’s a $70.9 million investment which provides financial assistance, mentoring and training.

That extra funding is going to Teach for Australia, but also the Australian Catholic University, La Trobe University’s Nexus Program, Charles Sturt University, Western Sydney University, Queensland University of Technology, Edith Cowan University, University of Canberra, University of South Australia and the University of Tasmania.

And to encourage more young people to burst out of school and want to become a teacher, rather than a banker or lawyer or God forbid a politician, we have also brought back Commonwealth Teaching Scholarships, worth up to $40,000.

They were massively oversubscribed last year and I suspect they will be massively oversubscribed again.

Applications for next year’s scholarships will open in the next few weeks.

I also know, like you know, just how important it is to get the practical part of becoming a teacher right.

The Expert Panel report includes recommendations about how we can improve prac.

This includes the new national guidelines being launched today.

It also includes professional recognition of the teachers who mentor ITE students.

That includes the time teachers spend mentoring students counting towards HALT certification.

Ministers have agreed to do this and that work is currently underway.

Then there is Paid Prac.

I know from talking to students that when they do their prac they sometimes have to give up their part-time job, or they've got to move away from home or work fewer hours.

Sometimes it can mean they have to delay doing their degree or not finish it at all.

That’s why we are introducing for the first time ever paid prac for eligible teaching students and not just teaching students, but nursing, midwifery and social work students as well, while they do the practical part of their degree.

I also want to give a special shout-out to Professor Jenny Gore and the team at the University of Newcastle for the Quality Teaching Rounds program she is running to get more teacher mentoring other teachers.

In the past nine years, it’s helped more than 4,700 teachers and benefited at least 785,000 students.

And it is being expanded to benefit an additional 1,600 teachers, thanks to almost $5 million from the Albanese Government.

It’s another piece of the puzzle, and it’s a brilliant example of the excellent work our universities do to not only produce more teachers, but make them even better teachers when they are in the classroom.

We have got a good education system in this country.

But it can be better and fairer.

That means reforming every part of our education system. From early education to school education and higher education.

And that is what I am doing. That’s what the Universities Accord is about, it’s what the Better and Fairer Schools Agreement is about, it’s what our response to the Productivity Commission’s Final Report on Early Education and Care will be about.

Building a better and fairer education system, and I know that none of it is possible without you.

You are an indispensable part of all of this.

So thank you for what you do. And what you are about to do.