'Must raise bar for new teachers'

[brendan]

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23443845-13881,00.html

Ewin Hannan | March 28, 2008

ASPIRING teachers should be tested to meet minimal standards in English literacy, numeracy and science before they are registered.

Australian Council for Educational Research chief executive officer Geoff Masters said the quality of graduates entering the teaching profession was not as high as it should be, and standards needed to be addressed to fulfil the federal Government's goal of an education revolution.

Although Australia by many measures had a high-quality education system, he said, the best-performing international systems attracted teachers who were among the top-ranking graduates.

Professor Masters said literacy and numeracy levels should be among the selection criteria for entry into teacher education programs, and new teachers should have to demonstrate minimal standards in literacy, numeracy and science before they were registered.

"We don't test teachers in any way at all that I'm aware of, in a systematic way, perhaps because we don't want to know the answers," he said at the New Agenda for Prosperity Conference. Setting higher entry requirements might sound counter-productive in areas where there were teacher shortages, but the best-performing education systems internationally - South Korea's, for instance - attracted the top graduates.

"Only if you go to the trouble of setting the bar high do you start to make teaching more attractive to your more able students," Professor Masters said.

"As long as we continue to have a relatively low bar for entry into teaching, the status of teaching in the eyes of young people will remain low.

"We know from American research that the attribute of teachers that is most highly correlated with children's achievement is (the) teacher's literacy levels.

"We don't currently in a systematic way have any particular requirement of literacy or numeracy levels for entry into teaching.

"The consequence frankly is that the literacy levels among many of (our) teachers are quite low. I would argue for setting thebar high (and) having high expectations."

He backed higher pay for teachers meeting high standards, a proposal that was supported by federal Opposition education spokesman Tony Smith.

Mr Smith told the conference that a pilot study to determine the best model for performance-based pay, and a new series of extra and higher pay scales, should be undertaken urgently.

He said paying more to the "best teachers" and to those who complete a higher standard of training would not necessarily create a two-tiered system of new and existing teachers.

Universities Australia chairman Richard Larkins highlighted the relative public funding neglect suffered by universities, which he said had become dangerously dependent on income from foreign students.

[costargh]

Agree with the idea and agree with the bolded statement

[Eriny]

This seems strange to me. How on Earth would trainee teachers graduate from university if they don't have the basic skills required for the courses they intend on teaching? I doubt that someone who didn't have basic literacy skills could pass.

[Collin Li]

I'm not sure if I agree with this either. Shouldn't it be schools deciding who their staff are? I guess this is a viable policy for public schools - the increased barrier to entry could raise wages for teachers and attract the more qualified kind of teacher. This might be necessary to fix the staffing in public schools, since they don't really have much incentive to staff the school well. I see it as an intervention to fix an intervention - not ideal, but pragmatic.