Third round of $40,000 Commonwealth Teaching Scholarships

1,000 students who started teaching degrees this year have been awarded scholarships as part of the Albanese Labor Government’s $160 million Commonwealth Teaching Scholarships Program.

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

More than 3,300 people applied for the 1,000 scholarships on offer in 2026. Of the successful recipients:

• Around 70 per cent are high achieving students with an ATAR above 80 or equivalent. 
• Around one third are from regional, rural or remote areas. 
• Around 6 per cent are First Nations students. 

The scholarships include a ‘commitment to teach’ requirement, which means recipients must be willing to commit to teach for up to four years (undergraduate) and up to 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, people from rural, regional and remote locations and people from low socio-economic backgrounds.

Around 3,000 scholarships have been awarded over three rounds since the program launched 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:

“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.

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

“That’s what these scholarships are all about.

“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.”