Initial teacher education in Australian universities is “consistent with a situation” where ITE applications are treated by (sic) cash cows by tertiary institutions” the Australian Education Union claims in its submission to the Gonski II review, “To achieve educational excellence in Australian schools.”

But the AEU also proposes that ITE students should do an undergrad degree followed by a two-year masters, which VCs looking for new cash flows would surely welcome.

The AEU argues for addressing this with “a more regulated and coordinated approach to ITE funding and accreditation in Australia.” The union also calls for a threshold ATAR of 70 and equivalents on other entry pathways so that only applicants in the top 30 per cent of students are admitted to teaching courses.

The masters and ATAR questions are not especially hard for the teacher education establishment to address. The first is hypothetical until, or if, the feds decide what it will do about the distribution of funding for professional masters, beyond the universities of Melbourne and UWA. And Christopher Pyne addressed the standards issue way back – calling for improvements in ITE degrees and in 2015 introducing the national literacy and numeracy tests that teacher-education students must pass to qualify as teachers.

But an ABC interview aside, the education deans kept their heads down and VCs with big ITE programmes were not talking, at least to CMM, perhaps because they are thoroughly sick of being accused of using education students as funding fodder. They need not be – while teacher education enrolments grew by 30 per cent 2006 and 2015 they remained in-line with overall numbers as demand driven funding kicked in, holding at 6 per cent of total enrolled students (CMM September 11). And a 2015 report for the Australian Council for Educational Research estimated demand for teachers to “remain high in most states for at least the next ten years.”