Next round of $40,000 Commonwealth Teaching Scholarships

Round 2 offers for the Albanese Labor Government’s $160 million Commonwealth Teaching Scholarships Program will start going out to successful applicants from today. 

The scholarships are worth up to $40,000 for new undergraduate students over four years, and up to $20,000 for new postgraduate teaching students over two years.

More than 3,300 applicants applied for the 1,000 scholarships on offer for 2025. 

The scholarships include a ‘commitment to teach’ requirement, which means recipients must be willing to commit to teach for four years (undergraduate) and two years (postgraduate) in public schools or early learning settings.

To encourage more teachers to live and work in remote Australia, students completing their final year professional experience placements in these communities may receive an additional top-up payment of $2,000. 

The scholarships are targeted at high-achieving school leavers, mid-career professionals, First Nations peoples, people with disability, people for whom English is an additional language or dialect and individuals from rural, regional and remote locations or from low socio-economic backgrounds. 

In the first round, almost 1,000 scholarships were awarded to initial teacher education students who started studying teaching in 2024. 

The Commonwealth Teaching Scholarships Program will deliver 5,000 scholarships over five years. The program is one part of our National Teacher Workforce Action Plan which is tackling the teacher workforce shortage.

More information on the Commonwealth Teaching Scholarships Program, including information on the application process, is at education.gov.au/teaching-scholarships.

Quotes attributable to Minister for Education Jason Clare:

“Teachers do the most important job in the world, but we need more of them. 

“This is an old school idea that we’ve brought back – we help you cut the costs while you are at uni and you pay it back by working in the public school system when you graduate. 

“The teacher shortage crisis has been 10 years in the making, made worse by the Liberals ripping the guts out of public school funding.

“We’re now starting to see this turn around. 

“Analysis shows both applications and offers are up for people wanting to study an undergraduate course in education with preliminary results showing a 14 per cent increase in offers this year compared to 2024.

“In addition to these scholarships, paid prac for teaching students starts on 1 July.”