Next round of teaching scholarships now open for applications

Students commencing teaching degrees in 2025 can now apply for scholarships worth up to $40,000.

This is the second round of the $160 million Commonwealth Teaching Scholarships Program to deliver 5,000 scholarships over five years.

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 government-run schools or early learning settings.

The first round of the program was highly successful, with more than 3,000 applications received, and almost 1,000 scholarships awarded to initial teacher education students who commenced their studies in 2024.

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.

Scholarships of $40,000 each will be available for new undergraduate teaching students over four years and $20,000 for new postgraduate teaching students over two years.

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.

This also builds on the Government’s program to cut HECS-HELP debt for teachers in very remote areas.

The Commonwealth Teaching Scholarships Program forms part of the National Teacher Workforce Action Plan.  

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

Applications close on Monday, 13 January 2025 at 5pm AEDT. 

Quotes attributable to Minister for Education Jason Clare:

“Being a teacher is the most important job in the world and we don't have enough of them.

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

“And I want more people in the middle of their careers to consider becoming teachers.

“That’s what these scholarships are all about.

“Tying scholarships to a commitment to teach is an old school idea that will help tackle today’s teacher workforce challenges.

“They will help 5,000 of the best and brightest teaching students to complete their studies and begin changing lives in the schools who need it most.

“This is one part of our plan to tackle the teacher workforce shortage and builds on our reforms to teacher training and the Commonwealth Prac Payment for teaching students.”