Improving Teacher Quality

Through the Smarter Schools National Partnership for Improving Teacher Quality the Australian Government is providing $550 million over five years to support states and territories to improve the quality of the Australian teaching workforce.

Funding contributions made by the Australian Government to states and territories under the Smarter Schools National Partnership for Teacher Quality are as follows:

NSW	VIC	QLD	SA	WA	TAS	NT	ACT
$142.2 million	$112.9 million	$87.6 million	$32.4 million	$45.0 million	$10.5 million	$5.4 million	$7.9 million

NB: the above represents $444 million of the $550 million being provided under this National Partnership. $106 million has been retained by the Australian Government as a Commonwealth Own Purpose Expense (COPE) to support joint national activity and principal professional development and support.

Why focus on teachers?

Evidence shows that quality teaching can overcome location and other disadvantages and is the single greatest in-school influence on student engagement and achievement. Improving teacher quality requires both strong school leadership and new approaches to teacher recruitment, retention and reward.

What’s happening under this National Partnership?

Under this National Partnership, Australian governments are implementing a range of nationally significant and sustainable reforms targeting critical points in the teacher ‘lifecycle’ to attract, train, place, develop and retain quality teachers and leaders in our schools and classrooms.

Attract > Train > Place > Develop > Retain >

The broad areas for reform include:

attracting the best graduates to teaching through additional pathways into teaching
improving the quality and consistency of teacher training in partnership with universities
developing National Professional Standards for Teachers to promote excellence in the profession, including requirements for teachers to have knowledge and understanding of the learning needs of Indigenous students
national consistency in the registration of teachers to support improved mobility in the teaching workforce
developing and enhancing the skills and knowledge of teachers and school leaders through improved performance management and professional learning
increasing retention through improved in-school support and rewarding quality teachers and school leaders in rural/remote and hard-to-staff schools, and
improving the quality and availability of teacher workforce data.

Additional funding for teacher quality

An extra $44.3 million has been committed over three years (2009-10 to 2011-12) for the Quality Teaching Package and Enhancing Literacy measures of the Closing the Gap in the Northern Territory National Partnership. These funds will be used to develop career pathways for Indigenous staff, increase the number of Indigenous staff with education qualifications and provide support and programs to enable teachers and to students achieve improved outcomes in literacy and numeracy in 73 targeted remote communities in the Northern Territory.

National Professional Standards for Teachers

An organisation called the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) has been established to develop and implement several teaching initiatives, including the National Professional Standards for Teachers. AITSL will also develop and maintain a process for measuring teachers against these standards throughout their careers.

Through the National Professional Standards for Teachers, each state is joining with the Australian Government to make sure that whatever school a child attends, they will receive a world class education delivered by teachers that meet the same levels of proficiency.

As such, the creation of teacher standards will influence the type of training that teachers might need to continue to meet the standards. AITSL will also assist with this by developing professional learning programs to be potentially adopted in all states and territories. In addition, AITSL will apply the standards to pre-service teacher education courses so that teaching graduates, no matter which institution they study at, will have met the same standards.

Further information about National Professional Standards for Teachers is available from the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership.

Teach for Australia

Another key reform under this National Partnership is the Teach for Australia initiative. The Teach for Australia initiative enables top graduates from fields including maths, commerce, law and science to teach in schools where they can make the most difference.

The Australian Government has commissioned the Australian Council of Educational Research to conduct an independent evaluation of the Teach for Australia program. The Evaluation Report Phase 1 of a three phase evaluation is now available.