There’s more to teacher education than the ATAR but changing the debate takes effort

The teacher education industry wants bipartisan leadership for a national strategy to attract “the best possible candidates to the profession.”

“Ad hoc, unconnected, short-term efforts will not progress the issue enough. We need a much more collaborative strategy, which links longer-term actions,” Tania Aspland (Australian Catholic U), president of the Australian Council of Deans of Education says.

She nominates core issues to address, including; encouraging secondary school students and their influencers to consider teaching; pay and career structures; supporting early career teachers; ongoing professional development; lessening the administrative burden; and “trusting our dedicated teachers to teach.”

What to do about these and a bunch of other issues was explored at last month’s ACDE Melbourne industry forum, (reports here).

But it will all happen in a political context and Professor Aspland sets-out what the teacher education community needs do to set it, nominating;

* career trajectory, “an absolutely essential element for people within the profession to stay in the profession and to be attracted to the profession.”

* remuneration, “deans can’t do anything about that, but we can do it collectively”

* teachers as life-long learners

* preparing teachers to teach from day

And if the industry doesn’t; “we, as the stakeholders, need to give the politicians something to run with if we don’t want them to run with the ATAR figure.”