Jason Clare

Want fairness at uni now? There’s one crucial thing the minister forgot

equity in higher education, equity in schooling, Universities Accord, Universities Accord Panel, university funding, , , , , , ,

Quality of higher education, equity of participation and access are front and centre in the new Universities Accord interim report, released by Education Minister Jason Clare at the National Press Club on Wednesday.

Minister Clare described five key priority areas for immediate action – three of which directly related to equity. In contrast to increasing equity and fairness for students, there was limited mention of university staff and the levels of casualisation in the sector, aside from calling for universities to become “exemplary employers”.

What are the five key priorities?

The first priority action recommends extending access to higher education by creating more Regional University Centres. In response, the federal government has committed to doubling the number of existing hubs, creating a further 20 centres in regional locations and 14 in the outer-suburban areas of major cities.

The second priority action recommends abolishing the 50% pass rule which was introduced under the former government’s Job Ready Graduates Package. The government has committed to removing this rule, which has disproportionately affected students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Professor Barney Dalgarno from the University of Canberra said that many of these students can excel in their studies, when given appropriate support from academics.

The third priority action seeks to ensure all First Nations students are eligible for a guaranteed funded place at university. In 2021 such a guarantee was introduced for First Nations students from regional and remote Australia, and the government has agreed to applying this guarantee nationwide. 

The fourth priority action recommends extending the Covid-era Higher Education Continuity Guarantee for 2024 and 2025. The government has agreed to this to allow funding certainty to universities as the Accord process rolls out.

Finally, the fifth priority action seeks to improve university governance with a focus on employment practices, student and staff safety, and the make-up of university governance bodies.

Equity is about more than aspirations

Investment in higher education is an investment in young people and in our future as a nation. As Minister Clare pointed out in his address, that investment needs to start in our early childhood education and continue through our school sector. He rightly treats the education landscape as an interconnected jigsaw puzzle.

However, too often the question of equity becomes one of raising aspirations. The interim report focuses on “increasing aspiration” and the need to “develop the aspirations of potential students”. However, we know from research that students from all backgrounds aspire to university and careers that require higher education qualifications. The final report of the Accord working group must focus on how we remove barriers that not only limit access to university for students from diverse backgrounds and target equity groups, but also support their success once they arrive on our campuses.

University staff are key to realising the Accord’s ambitions

A big gap in the Accord’s interim report is concrete action on improving employment conditions at universities. The Accord report rightly acknowledges the rife casualisation across the sector, noting that 69% of teaching is conducted by casual staff members. While the report notes that casual employment can suit both employer and employees, a 2019 survey conducted by NTEU showed that 82% of casual staff would prefer part-time or full-time ongoing employment. 

My research, with colleagues from QUT, Charles Sturt University and the United Kingdom, has identified that casualisation of teaching and short-term contract research gigs disproportionately impact women, people from diverse backgrounds and early career researchers. Lengths of precarity can limit career opportunities through reduced ability to obtain professional development or career planning. Some casuals have held the same roles for decades and yet aren’t considered eligible for conversion to ongoing roles.

The Accord recognises that recent staff underpayments are “patently unacceptable” for a public institution but must go further to ensure that everyone in academic work is paid for the time they spend on supporting student learning and engaging in high quality research.

Casual teaching staff are only paid for their time on class and limited time for marking assignments. They are not currently paid for their time engaging in professional development or providing additional supports for students, both of which are recommendations within the Accord. These situations leave many academics with the impossible choice of providing the levels of support that they know students need and just focusing on what they are paid to do. Universities know this and exploit the care and dedication of their staff. 

More consistent funding is required for universities to ‘de-casualise’ and ensure that the knowledge and skills of high-quality lecturers and researchers are acknowledged, retained and enhanced.

A vision for high quality teaching and research

Consideration of the employment conditions in Australian universities is critical if the vision laid out in the Accord interim report is to be achieved. It describes a vision for 2035 of a more equitable system that supports all Australians, who choose to go to university, to study in supportive environments that foster high quality teaching and research. 

The interim report acknowledges that this vision and “the sector’s success in delivering skills, knowledge and equity is underpinned by enduring and stable funding and governance architecture”. The potential risks of continuing such high levels of casualisation in higher education are clearly illustrated in the issues currently playing out in UK universities, reminding us that “staff working conditions are student learning conditions”.

Jess Harris is an associate professor in the School of Education at the University of Newcastle. Her research is focused on the leadership and development of teachers and teaching within schools and through initial teacher education. She draws on a range of qualitative research methods, including conversation analysis and membership categorisation analysis.

Image of Jason Clare at the National Press Club from video on his Facebook page.

This budget wreaks havoc on education – with one miraculous exception

Budget analysis, , , ,

There were zero mentions of universities, schools or teachers in the 30-minute federal budget speech made by Treasurer Jim Chalmers Tuesday night.

This set the trend for a disappointing 2023-24 federal budget for much of the education sector. Chalmers, via his words and actions, refused to fund schools and universities in a way that made them a defining policy for the early years of the Albanese government. Universities, schools, and teachers might have expected more given the Labor Party delivered a budget surplus of $4.2 billion (the first in 15 years) and the mounting challenges facing higher education and schooling now and into the future. Chalmers and Education Minister Jason Clare will argue there are currently ongoing national reviews throughout this year into early childhood education, school education, teacher education (again) and the higher education sector and that before any large-scale funding reform can begin, these processes will need to be completed. Chalmers would also point to his strong support for the TAFE and foundation skills sectors in both his speech and budget from 2024 onwards. 

That may well be the case but I ask: can overworked and under-resourced staff across the education sector wait that long for adequate resourcing and support to do their jobs? The teacher shortage in many schools has reached a crisis level, infrastructure and maintenance issues continue in many – mostly public schools – and the cost of living is hitting education sector workers hard. Yet Chalmers could not manage to mention any of these education issues in his almost 4000 words to parliament. The budget itself followed a similar path although there were some positives. Chalmers’ speech and budget policy concerning schooling in particular is a stark contrast to the last time the federal ALP came to power in 2007 promising an ‘education revolution’, and this raises concerns for what is to come later this year and through 2024 and beyond.

So what is in the budget for universities and TAFEs?

New announcements for the higher education sector were few and far between on Tuesday night. This was not necessarily unexpected given the ongoing Australian Universities Accord review into the higher education sector. That said, the alarming and dark trend of no new support for university research continues—although the ALP did manage to find $159 million over four years for politicians’ electoral staff. 

As Universities Australia point out: funding for university research has now fallen to its lowest level measured against gross domestic product (GDP). Furthermore, there was no new funding from the federal government to support university sector employees. This speaks to the importance of the work the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) is doing and has done (with those who have a deal in place) with universities nationwide to reach fair Enterprise Bargaining Agreements (EBA). Elsewhere, and unfortunately for our students, indexation on university Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS) loans will rise to 7.1 per cent in June 2023, adding to the debt burden students will have to repay in an already formidable economic context marred by high inflation and a housing and rental crisis. 

On a more positive note, the budget provides $128.5 million to deliver 4,000 new Commonwealth Supported Places to universities in 2023 and 2024 that focus on STEM disciplines (nothing new). There is also a welcome $17.7 million over four years for the Disability Support Program to assist universities to better enable students with disability to access, participate and succeed in higher education. And there is an overdue increase in income support payments for university students struggling with financial pressures although they needed to go further than the 15% increase in rent assistance and a $40 increase per fortnight for AusStudy and AbStudy. The review into the higher education sector led by Professor Mary O’Kane will provide its interim report in June and its final report in December of this year. The focus, therefore, on university funding and reform will ramp up in the second half of this year and into 2024. 

The TAFE and foundation skills sectors received strong support in the budget. Chalmers even mentioned them directly in his speech to the nation. There was an additional $3.7 billion for the five-year National Skills Agreement, which is set to begin in January 2024, pending the ongoing negotiations with the states and territories. Under this agreement, there will be 300,000 new fee-free TAFE and VET places available. There is also $436 million to improve foundational language, numeracy, and digital skills of Australians aged over 15. The budget also provides $25.1 million to extend the existing Women in STEM Cadetships and Advanced Apprenticeships program through to 2026-27. 

Skills and training are clearly a policy priority for the Albanese government given Chalmers’ comments on budget evening and the fact they will spend $12.8 billion over five years from 2024—subject to the agreement of the new National Skills Agreement. The contrast in the government’s public and policy approach to skills and training to that of the universities and schools may be a sign of things to come. 

What does the budget do for schools and early childhood education?  

Schools and early childhood education received some useful support—although much more comprehensive assistance was required. The budget provides an additional $9.3 million to help attract, train and retain school teachers as part of the implementation of the National Teacher Workforce Action Plan announced in the October 2022 budget. A further $72.4 million is available to support the skills and training of workers in the early childhood education and care sector aswell as $18 million in funding for grants to establish new centre based long day care or family day care services. There is also $92.8 million to support First Nations education programs over the next four years. While this support for First Nation students is important, Dr. Tracy Woodroffe emphasises the need to concentrate on improving the education system as a whole. For central Australian schools, the federal government delivers $40.4 million over the next two financial years to improve school attendance, engagement and learning outcomes for students.

A deep dive into the Department of Education’s budget statements shows the Albanese Government plans to allocate $17.4 billion to non-government schools, which enrol 34% of all Australian students, in the upcoming financial year. In contrast, public schools, which enrol 66% of all Australian students, will receive just $10.8 billion in recurrent funding for the same period. This is the result of the current funding arrangement in which the federal government provides 80% of all recurrent funding to non-government schools and 20% to public schools. The imbalance in the federal funding of the school sectors highlights one of many structural issues facing the Australian education system that must be a focus of the next National School Reform Agreement to be signed in 2024. Interestingly, the Department for Education budget papers flag a focus on strengthening the policy and financial assurance and compliance of non-government schools to ensure they are using funding appropriately for school education. It will be interesting to follow the trajectory of this new policy in the coming months and years.

Since the budget was released on Tuesday night, I have had discussions with school leaders from challenging public school contexts. They have emphasised to me the urgent need for significantly more funding to attract and retain teachers, upgrade and maintain infrastructure, and compensate pre-service teachers for their professional placements, which are currently unpaid. Although the budget provided some additional funding to address the teacher shortage, it ignored the other two concerns. On top of this, the funding allocated for the former was deemed insufficient given the size and immediacy of the challenge. The current Review to Inform a Better and Fairer Education System led by Dr Lisa O’Brien provides the opportunity to again raise these concerns with the Albanese government in time for the next National School Reform Agreement in 2024.   

Verdict 

The 2023-24 budget could have done more for universities and schools. Money has flowed into the federal government treasury at unexpected speed compared to budget forecasts, thanks to increased mining commodity prices, high taxes, and low unemployment.

In contrast, the education sector’s employees have never had it tougher with increased workloads, staff shortages, high inflation, and the cost of living, just to name a few of the challenges.

Chalmers and his team could have supported the education sector more holistically by:

  • Increasing funding for university-based education research.
  • Matching the 15% pay increase for aged-care workers for all education employees
  • Adding significantly more funding on top of what has already been allocated to train, attract, and retain teachers in public schools that face staffing challenges.
  • Delivering much-needed increases in funding for infrastructure and maintenance in public schools that lack private fundraising capability.
  • Providing funding for paid placements for pre-service teachers in public schools facing staffing shortages
  • Delivering a larger increase in the cost-of-living payments for university students.

 Looking ahead

Looking ahead, next year’s federal budget looms as a defining one for the education sector and the Albanese government. The National School Reform Agreement will be signed off in 2024 and the four national reviews underway will have handed down their recommendations and reports to the government. Watch this space.  

Dr. Matthew P. Sinclair is a lecturer of education policy at Curtin University’s School of Education in Western Australia. His research and teaching focuses on education policy, school funding, globalisation, education futures, and equity in schooling.

Timid thinking no longer cuts it. Change is needed now

School funding, stop govt funding of private schools, , , , , , ,

Their buildings are substandard— cheap and poorly ventilated.  Their classrooms are under resourced and uninviting. Their gardens are sparce and bleak.  Their play and sports grounds are inadequate— frequently small and ill equipped. Their students often struggle at school and their families often struggle at home. Money is scarce, employment and housing are insecure and good health care is usually unaffordable. 

Their teachers work harder than most because their students need more help than most. But these teachers don’t receive anywhere near the support and recognition they deserve. Many such schools are government schools. Yet they are left to make do with minimal resources and minimal care from state and federal governments. They have been pretty much abandoned— left to deteriorate, not properly helped prosper. 

Instead, these governments have allowed the private sector of schooling to grow without limit— depleting struggling government schools of the material and human resources they need for their students to flourish rather than flounder. 

These schools and these kids are part of the’ long tail’ of under-achievement that characterises the Australian schooling system. But the tail’s problems can’t be addressed in isolation. They are the tragic effect of much bigger problems. Australia’s schooling system is amongst the most privatised and least equitable in the world. And it underperforms on many indicators. 

New opportunities for equitable, achievement-oriented, change in Australian schooling have arisen in 2023. We now have a progressive national government, an equity-sensitive federal Minister for Education, and the National School Reform Agreement is being renegotiated. 

The time is thus ripe to reconsider and reconfigure the fateful intersections between school funding, equity, and achievement. This requires a critical examination of the vexed relationships between the public and private sector and federal and state governments. On Monday, the Melbourne Graduate School of Education hosted a policy symposium and public forum, called Funding, Equity and Achievement, which interrogated these intersections and vexed relationships.

The symposium room was packed with 75 experienced education policy analysts, members of key stake-holder groups and people from state and federal governments. Ten eminent thinkers, including speakers Professor Barry McGaw, The Hon Dr Carmen Lawrence AO and The Hon Verity Firth AM, shared their views and the public forum attracted over 250 participants off and online. And Melbourne University’s Twitter feed had over 3000 views. 

The Gonski Report of 2011 was a touchstone for discussion at this event. All agreed that its funding solutions to the problems of equity and achievement have since been seriously watered down.  

Some argued that the political timidity of the national Labor government, the power of the private school lobby and the sectional interests of the states were ultimately responsible.  

‘Gonski lite’ was the result. Yes, ‘needs-based’ recurrent funding arrangements were a result and the focus on needs was welcome. But ultimately, as many policy experts at the Symposium showed, greed replaced need. Gonski was always in the lite side, others insisted.   It was constrained from the outset by an invented funding architecture involving state, Catholic and Independent school systems.  This architecture, they argued, is a policy construction and convenience. Yet is treated as immovable and untouchable. The implicit message to the Gonski review team was don’t mess with the private schools. 

Historians in the room shared examples of the formidable power of private schools’ backlash-politics – and of their serious electoral consequences.  

State schools abandoned by governments 

So began an unjustifiable pattern of school funding. This is known as the 80/20 split. The wealthier federal government provides 80 per cent funding to private schools and 20 per cent of funding to state schools. The poorer states and territories do the reverse.  And here is the kicker. The Federal government meets its funding obligations to private schools and constantly provides them with lavish top ups. In contrast, the states and territories seldom meet their funding obligations to state schools. 

Speakers at the Sympisoum provided an avalanche of carefully researched numbers which left no doubt about the serious funding inequities. Slide after power-point slide showed how private schools have been consistently over-funded and how state schools have been consistently underfunded.  

A vicious funding circle was identified. The more resources the private sector gets, the more it grows. The more it grows, the greater its market dominance and share of allocated resources. Along with this is a sense of entitlement to automatic funding. In turn, this has led to the private school sector opening new schools and upgrading and expanding existing ones at will. 

This sector has thus enjoyed unfettered growth – becoming ever bigger, more middle class and more segregated from wider Australia. Few people in the room agreed with the funding split that has allowed this to happen. Many firmly believed the Commonwealth should more equally share its funding benevolence with state schools.  

And for this to happen they thought, a National Schools Resourcing Body as proposed by Gonski should be established. This would over-see funding for both public and private schools— together. The relationships between the sectors would be in plain sight. 

Public funding to private schools is untied. They are not required by law to provide any wider public benefit. They do as they please despite the copious amounts of public money they receive. The Symposium audience was shown how the wealthiest private schools draw on their funding excesses to fund their infrastructure excesses. We wondered if such overabundance could be justified in educational terms.  We agreed it was more about market signalling than student learning. So why fund it? 

Other questions arose. Should public money be conditional on private schools democratising their fee structures, entry policies and governance practices? Yes. 

What can stop them from draining the state school sector of money, reputation and the ‘best’ teachers, students and parents? Cap their growth for a start. Properly fund all state schools so that they can be the best they can be. 

The policy symposium provided unequivocal evidence that increases in private school funding have been at the expense of funding for public schools especially for struggling schools in struggling locations. 

Such underfunding, we agreed, leads to under achievement. Indigenous kids, country kids, kids with disabilities and kids from low-income families under-achieve because they are under-supported. They are under supported because they are under-funded. 

Struggling schools in struggling locations have less money to spend on the bare necessities. Additional resources are necessary to allow them to meet their complex needs in the best ways possible. Distinct and distinctive interventions are required.  

Ken Boston, a member of the Gonski Committee and former Director-General of the NSW Education Department, said as much, back in 2017: “They need smaller class sizes, specialist personnel to deliver the appropriate tiered interventions, speech therapists, counsellors, school/family liaison officers including interpreters, and a range of other support. And that support requires money. You can’t deliver education as a genuine public good without strategically differentiated public funding directed at areas of need. That’s what Gonski sought to achieve.”

Such under-support is sometimes driven by a naive policy mindset. It goes like this, ‘It’s not the money that matters but what you do with it’. Money AND what-you-do-with-it matter. It is not an either/or situation

Serious concerns were expressed that the current federal Labor government might not live up to its policy rhetoric.  People feared it might adopt a target and tinker approach.  Safe, simple and unlikely to make much difference. Time and again people called for systemic change. 

Presenters shared international studies that convincingly show how achieving equity at the systemic level leads to systemic improvements in achievement. Put equity first and achievement follows. 

Further, segregated education systems concentrate disadvantage. This, it was shown, has all sorts of deleterious effects and not just on the schooling of disadvantaged kids. Social cohesion depends on social mixing and where better to learn to mix than at school? The shared case study of Poland’s dramatic rise in school results is attributed to its introduction of comprehensive schools. 

 Many agreed that, despite its limitations, the Gonski review made hope possible. State school supporters united behind the slogan ‘I give a Gonski’.  

Now such supporters must unite again to save state schools from the residualisation caused by private school expansion. And the federal government must be prepared to stand up to the private school lobby which has neither the public interest nor the national interest at heart. 

Timid, standard arrangements and conventional thinking no longer cut it. Change is urgently required. 

Professor Jane Kenway is an elected Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, Australia, Emeritus Professor at Monash University and Professorial Fellow at the University of Melbourne. Her research expertise is in educational sociology.  

Teachers now: Why I left and where I’ve gone

21st century teaching, leaving teaching, teacher pay, teacher recruitment, teacher retention, teacher shortage, teacher workforce, , , , , , ,

“When you are a high achieving person, teaching sets you up for failure because you are never enough for everybody.”

The teaching profession is in crisis. By 2025, the federal government estimates a shortfall of more than 4,000 high school teachers across the country. While there is a significant body of research that has tracked the influence of teachers’ work and lives and their retention in the teaching profession, less is known about teachers who have left the profession. 

Research, media reports, and anecdotal evidence report teachers’ intentions to leave the profession within their first five years of teaching at a rate of up to 50% of the workforce, leaving Australian schools with further critical workforce shortages. 

This research addresses this claim. In this nationwide study, 255 respondents/those who have exited the profession have provided insights into why they left, the critical factors that influenced their decision to leave and revealed details about the next phase of their lives. As one ex-teacher said,

As a teacher you have never done enough. You work and work and work, creating, thinking, planning to get the best for each student and it’s still never enough. You still can’t help so many students, you never satisfy the administration load and so much pressure from parents. When you are a high achieving person, teaching sets you up for failure because you are never enough for everybody.

Preliminary results suggest that while all Australian states and territories were represented in this study, half of the respondents were from Victoria, and close to a quarter were from both New South Wales and Queensland. Almost two-thirds of those who left were from metropolitan regions and a third of the respondents were from regional areas. Almost two thirds (60%) were from the State sector, a quarter from the independent sector and almost 20% from the Catholic sector. 

70 percent of those who left the profession were full-time employees.

Who is leaving the teaching profession?

Of the 242 respondents 167 were female, 71 were male and 4 identified as other. Most had been working in metropolitan schools prior to leaving (around 60%) and 60 percent were from the state sector. 70% were teaching in secondary schools at the time of leaving and 30% in primary schools. Most respondents were from Victoria, followed by NSW and Queensland. 

The greatest number of respondents had been teaching for 7-10 years followed by those who had been teaching for 11-15 years. Combined this accounted for almost 40% of those surveyed. Fifteen percent left after 4-6 years. Whilst it is evident that we are losing teachers who are early into their teaching career, the majority of those who are leaving the profession are experienced classroom teachers and leaders in their school. Forty percent of those surveyed were in school leadership positions at the time of leaving.

In response to where participants were working prior to leaving the profession, of the 172 responses, almost 57% (98) were working in metropolitan areas; 35% (59) in regional and 13% (8) in rural areas. 1% (2) – remote or other.

Why are they leaving?

Our study shows that teachers are faced with a range of challenges in the profession, causing them to not only rethink their career as a teacher but significant enough to push them to the point of taking that definitive step and leaving it behind. Participants told us that the work environment, school leadership, dealing with student behaviour, administrative load, and workload more broadly were the big contributors to their decision to leave the profession. These ex-teachers stated that they did not feel respected, and their work had failed to bring about or sustain the level of personal satisfaction they sought from their careers. 

“Until teachers are given more time, respect and support to actually do their jobs, more will continue to leave the profession.”

Significantly, these ex-teachers felt that leaving was the result of not just one of the challenges in isolation; but rather “a culmination of many things over a long period of time” that made their jobs untenable. 

“I was just so anxious, unwell, and unhappy. Every day I felt sick on my way to work. I could never get through my mountain of work, I could never get on top of classroom behaviour, and I could never get to a place where I was able to deal with the unreasonable demands of the school.”

In essence, leaving was based on a long list of issues that, in combination, gave them no choice but to walk away. Their disappointment, frustration, and anger were palpable in their responses, as they reported on a broken system, and a ridiculous workload made all the harder by administrative and extracurricular demands. These ex-teachers also spoke of having to deal with challenging leaders, parents, and students. These challenges were then topped off by “a teaching profession that is misunderstood, disrespected and unappreciated”.

“I became a teacher because I am passionate about equipping the next generation to be their best. The education sector is making this harder and harder from a wellbeing perspective and from an educational perspective. The curriculum is crowded, students are pressured to succeed, teachers are trashed in media…There is little understanding of the complexity of these roles by those outside of schools.”

“Misalignment between my values and those of my colleagues and leadership. Not being equipped/ experienced enough to manage the tension that created. Lack of support from leadership when other teachers or middle leadership were treating me, other colleagues, and students in ways that did not align with my values.”

Where are they going? 

Overwhelmingly most of those who had left teaching after 4-15 years were still working but in different professions (90%). Many of those who had left teaching (36%) are still working in education related areas such as devising education resources, developing education policy, consulting and managing education programs in institutions such as museums and art galleries. A surprising number (20%) have transitioned into work in the Higher Education sector. About 7% had returned to casual teaching in one way or another, some had sought further education through study (4.4%) and only 4.4 % had fully retired.   The remaining ex-teachers were involved in work closely  connected to helping people such as in Social Work, sports coaching, counselling and the well-being industry. 

 The implications of these findings are far reaching as they show that teachers are making a notable contribution to the workforce when they leave. It is clear that they take their highly transferable skills built up through training and experience with them. The findings also suggest the continued commitment of teachers to matters educational leaving teaching but not education.

  • I started my own business in the private disability sector. I now work full-time in this space and employ eight people.
  • Working for a company delivering student wellbeing programs 
  • I am still in education but not in schools
  • I am a learning designer
  • I left the teaching profession in a school context. I remain in education and teaching in an ITE context where I can both contribute and be challenged / developed. 

The small number of teachers (almost 10%) who had completely ‘jumped ship’ to another profession demonstrates a variety of new career directions including working in a cattery, as a truck driver, in animal rescue, in the military, in corporate marketing and as an engineer. 

What is the impact?

Whether we have teachers in the first five years in their mid-careers, or in their later careers leave in critical numbers as they now are, the impact will be far-reaching.  Schools are communities that thrive on having teachers from all career stages. When an early career teacher leaves, the school loses that teacher’s inclination for innovation, new perspectives, and in some instances, a future school leader.  When a more experienced teacher leaves, they take with them their experience and expertise and as a result, both students and early careers teachers miss the opportunity to benefit from their accumulated talent.  

As one of our survey participants explained, “When teachers with my years of experience start leaving in droves then that’s truly a truly catastrophic loss to the system. And that’s what we are seeing…”

“I consider myself to be a highly skilled and educated teacher. I have 3 master’s degrees and felt very confident in the classroom. However, the workload required to prove my worth was unreasonable and unsustainable.”

Previous research has spoken to these impacts, yet our study revealed the cost to these participants as well. Having left the profession, they did feel a sense of relief about getting their lives back, and for some the negative impacts to their health and wellbeing experienced while teaching began to dissipate. Many others, however, continue to experience issues related to their physical and mental wellbeing.  As one ex-teacher out it, 

“I was in complete burn out. There were too many administrative changes and expectations that led to unattainable work pressures. My mental health and family life were suffering, and I needed to make a choice. I love teaching and loved working with the students. I miss it but the expectations placed upon teachers is unrealistic and unsustainable without long term damage.”

For many, it also meant walking away from a vocation they still cared about, and they felt a deep sadness at leaving behind their students.

As another participant put it: “The hardest thing was knowing I was walking away from making a difference in the lives of young people, each and every day.”

Eighty percent of those who have left the profession have maintained their registration and while one third of the participants stated that they would ‘definitely not’ return to the profession, almost half were less definite about their future plans. 

We now know more about the problems in the sector and the narratives provided by the ex-teachers shine a light on the personal, professional, health and emotional impacts of not only leaving the profession but on the anguish that many felt prior to making the ultimate decision to leave. 

Many have left teaching, but not education. Some have used the skills and knowledge they have accumulated to begin new ventures in new professions. They have embraced the change.

However, our research shows that there is an opportunity for all stakeholders to address issues of flexibility, school leadership, progression and pathways, including a commensurate salary – “a living wage” – to halt the exodus from the teaching profession.  

From left to right: Robyn Brandenburg is a professor of education in the Institute of Education, Arts and Community at Federation University Australia. She researches teacher education, reflective practice and feedback and mathematics education and is a past-president of the Australian Teacher Education Association. She is on LinkedIn and Twitter @brandenburgr. Ellen Larsen is a senior lecturer in the School of Education at the University of Southern Queensland (UniSQ). Ellen is a member of the Australian Association for Research in Education [AARE] executive and a convenor of the national AARE Teachers’ Work and Lives Special Interest Group. Ellen’s areas of research work include teacher professional learning, early career teachers, mentoring and induction, teacher identity, and education policy.  She is on Twitter @DrEllenLarsen1. Richard Sallis is an Arts education academic in the Melbourne Graduate School of Education at The University of Melbourne. He also holds positions with the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA) and is a leader in curriculum planning and teacher professional development. His research interests include Initial Teacher Education, teacher professional learning, and diversity and inclusion in schools. He is on LinkedIn. Alyson Simpson is a professor of English and Literacy Education in the Sydney School of Education and Social Work at the University of Sydney. Her current research projects focus on building an evidence base of teacher quality, the role of children’s literature in education, and the power of dialogic learning. She is on Twitter @ProfAMSimpson

Universities Accord: Why this urgent deadline is mission (almost) impossible

higher education, higher education funding, higher education policy, Jason Clare, Job Ready Graduates Package, Universities Accord, , , , ,

Last November education minister Jason Clare released details of Labor’s election promise ‘Universities Accord’ review of higher education. Its terms of reference are wide-ranging. Skills, equity, quality, funding, engagement, research, commercialisation, workforce, regulation, governance and connections to vocational education are all in the brief.

An ambitious schedule

A consultation paper released last month poses 49 questions for stakeholder feedback. Joining considered answers to these questions into a coherent set of recommendations on the Accord review’s timeline is a near-impossible task. An interim report is due in June 2023 and a final report in December 2023.

The most practical way forward for the seven-person Accord panel chaired by former vice-chancellor Mary O’Kane is to recommend policy responses to pressing problems and policy processes for resolving longer-term matters. Australia’s higher education system has faults, but most of them do not need admitting to the policy hospital via its emergency department.  

Student contribution reform should be a priority

My first submission to the Accord panel, made in late 2022, focused on matters I see as relatively urgent. These include the student contribution system established by the Morrison government’s Job-ready Graduates policy, which more than doubled student contributions for most Arts students, slashed them for nursing and teaching students, and moved most other student charges up or down. The idea was to encourage students to take ‘job ready’ or other ‘national priority’ courses.

The Morrison government agreed in 2020 to a Job-ready Graduates review to commence in 2022. The Albanese government slowed this review down by incorporating it into the Accord process. The student contribution reform timeline now looks like a final Accord report December 2023, legislation 2024, and implementation 2025. 

But every year Job-ready Graduates continues, with the top student contribution now above $15,000 a year, students charged this amount sink further into a debt that will take them many years, and potentially decades, to pay off. CPI-linked indexation of their accumulated HELP debt, likely to be around 7 per cent when applied on 1 June this year, will compound their financial misery.

A June 2023 interim report focused on student contributions would leave time for legislation later in 2023 and new student contributions in 2024. Job-ready Graduates itself worked on similar timelines.

My proposal links student contribution levels to other practical policy issues including HELP debt repayment times. One goal is to align average repayment times between courses, so that the years of work required to clear a debt become more similar. Underlying dollar amounts of debt could still vary. Doctors for example earn more than nurses, so with HELP repayments based on a percentage of income doctors repay more each year and can incur larger debts without causing longer repayment periods than nurses.

Student contribution rates cannot be set entirely in isolation from other policies that might be decided later in the Accord process, such as total university resources for teaching or the overall share of public and private finance. The price relativities between courses could, however, be set this year, with later smaller adjustments to support other policy decisions. Every study of graduate earnings shows arts graduate incomes at the lower end of the range, so arts student contributions would return to the cheapest level. 

The problems of a stakeholder-government ‘partnership’

 For longer-run policies, the Accord panel’s consultation paper suggests a ‘continuous dynamic partnership’ involving the government and sector stakeholders. A formal consultative body to promote regular discussion of higher education trends and performance is worth considering. But giving it a formal role in setting policies and priorities via an Accord ‘partnership’ would be a mistake.

The higher education institutions to negotiate a sector-level Accord partnership do not exist. The sector has many conflicting interests and opinions, within nothing like elections and parliament on the government side to reach decisions seen as legitimately made despite disagreement.

An Accord with real influence over policy direction would accentuate power imbalances. University management and staff are well-organised to promote their views in stakeholder discussion, but student and other groups are less effective. Student income support and HELP debt get little attention from non-student stakeholders. Policies on these topics affect household and public, but not university, finances. The interests of taxpayers are not considered by sector stakeholders, beyond general claims about higher education’s public benefits.

 A government-sector ’partnership’ approach also risks bypassing Parliament on issues that it should engage with, replacing legislated policies with agreements between the minister and universities.

The government should consult, but ultimately it must set priorities and make trade-offs between competing goals. The government and any new consultative body should diligently monitor higher education trends, but direction-setting should not be a ‘continuous’ or ‘dynamic’ process. Well-designed policies let higher education institutions adapt to changing circumstances within a stable set of rules. Such rules are a better basis for successful long-term strategies than deals that change with the mood and the minister.  

Andrew Norton is Professor in the Practice of Higher Education Policy at the Centre for Social Research and Methods at the Australian National University.  He is a member of the Australian Universities Accord Ministerial Reference GroupHe blogs at andrewnorton.net .au  Follow him on Twitter @andrewjnorton 

Header image of the February 21 meeting of the Ministerial Reference Group is from Jason Clare’s Facebook page

International Day of Education: why Jason Clare and Sussan Ley must get to class immediately

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“Today at school I will learn to read at once; then tomorrow I will begin to write, and the day after tomorrow to figure. Then, with my acquirements, I will earn a great deal of money, and with the first money I have in my pocket I will immediately buy for my papa a beautiful new cloth coat,” said Pinocchio. The goals of Carol Collodi’s famous puppet character expressed in 1883 are no different from the goals set for today’s students across the globe. Become educated so that you can make decisions about your future. But education is more than a pursuit to fulfill personal goals. It is also about responsibility to others and to the community. Pinocchio begins to understand this concept as he contemplates buying Geppetto a new coat.

UNESCO conceptualizes education as a human right, a public good and a public responsibility, key to developing opportunities, creating pathways out of poverty and foundational to global sustainability. Today, January 24 is the UNESCO declared International Day of Education, where all countries are called upon to invest in people by prioritizing education. UNESCO calls for a reduction in global poverty and the removal of the political barricades which prevent inclusive and equitable education. Each country, but especially the richer countries like Australia need to step up to address global educational responsibilities and this can begin by ensuring equity is a priority in our own educational system.

Australians hold interest in education. This can be seen in the political and media attention raised from the latest report on education released by the Productivity Commission. Equity or rather inequity is embedded in the report’s results. These results are presented as something new. However, the report reinforces what has been known for a long time – educational attainment, as measured by standardized testing is linked to parental educational background and certain groups in Australian society, such as rural students or students from Indigenous backgrounds are less likely to meet the set minimum standards. Australian education is not equitable.

Education minister Jason Clare said on breakfast television that he did not wish Australia to be a country where your chances in life depend on who your parents are or where you live or the colour of your skin. If this is the case, then the questions must be asked, are these students who are failing, the same students who do not have access to community facilities, such as libraries, sporting grounds and swimming pools? Are these the same students who live in areas with unreliable public transport? Are these the same students whose families are struggling with mortgage stress or who are unable to get a stable rental property? Are these the same students who are locked out of extra curricula activities? Are these the students who do not have a computer at home? Are these the students who in their first few years of life did not have access to child and maternal health and later to high quality child-care? Are these the same students who come from families who have had no support to maintain their first language or whose cultural practices are not valued? If yes is the answer to any of these questions, then perhaps the focus for educational reform should begin by looking outside of the school gates.

The inevitable catch cry ‘back to basics’ has begun. In the same interview as Jason Clare, Deputy leader of the Liberal party, Sussan Ley called for a ‘back to basics’ solution. This is the backhanded rhetoric that slams teachers. It implies that teachers have veered away from good, relevant teaching and are wasting time in frivolous pursuits. Similarly, Jason Clare’s solution is insulting. He suggests teachers need to spend less time lesson planning and more time in the classroom. Before reducing a vital component of the teaching role, let’s consider less time on bus duty, bin duty, lunch time supervision, endless meetings and paperwork to negotiate the red tape around NDIS requirements. Teachers planning lessons to meet the diverse needs of their students is the real back to basics. In most schools, planning is a collaborative process, which also addresses teachers’ ongoing professional learning. Planning sessions allow teachers to share what is working well for their students and seek advice from their expert colleagues about students who are facing challenges. 

Schools and teachers constantly address professional improvement. Teachers want what is best for the students they teach, not only in literacy and numeracy but across all aspects of academia and wellbeing. That’s why they became teachers! The lens has to shift away from schools and educational reform for a while, to spotlight issues of societal inequity. 

On this International Day of Education, let’s consider human rights, public good and global responsibilities. Let’s also consider out national situation and not be puppets pulled by the strings of rhetoric that call for reform in a so called failing educational system. Rather, let’s look at what is working well in schools, listen to the voices of teachers who respond daily to student diversity and work towards a bipartisan movement that addresses the issues of inequity which create the disparity evident in the Productivity Commission’s report. It’s our global responsibility to do so. Surely, this is not just a fairy tale dream.

Dr Helen Cozmescu is a member of the Teacher Education Group, at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne. She lecturers in pre-service and post-graduate language and literacy subjects and delivers professional learning for in-service teachers. Helen’s research has intersected critical literacy, the early years of schooling and First Nations texts. Her current research involves understanding the role of literacy professional learning for in-service teachers and the nexus created by theoretical perspectives, research and practice. Helen has had significant experience working in schools, as a primary school teacher and leader, and as a literacy consultant.  

Header images from the Facebook pages of Jason Clare and Sussan Ley.

Why the federal government must ditch Jobs Ready Graduates now

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New figures challenge the assumptions behind the Job-Ready Graduates package, introduced by the former Coalition government and unchanged by Labor. That package has underestimated the value and employability of arts, social science and humanities graduates.

The employment outcomes of students enrolled in arts, social sciences and humanities degrees have risen to 89.6 per cent – an increase of 25 percentage points according to the Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching (QILT) 2022 Longitudinal Graduate Outcomes Survey released this month.

The Package, introduced under former Education Minister Dan Tehan in 2020 and implemented this year, has seen the cost for students of many arts, social science and humanities degrees more than double.

QILT’s longitudinal study shows that the graduates in a wide range of disciplines, including arts, social sciences and humanities are highly employable and that attempts to drive students into some fields at the expense of others are misplaced.

The report measures the medium-term outcomes of higher education graduates based on a cohort analysis of graduates who responded to the 2019 Graduate Outcomes Survey. 

It noted the figures around generalist degrees “continue to demonstrate an important point – that while undergraduates from some fields of education, in particular those with generalist degrees, have weaker employment outcomes soon after completing their course, the gap in employment outcomes across fields of education tends to narrow over time.”

The Federal Government must commit to abandoning the policy which is putting our students at a significant financial disadvantage.

Nick Bisley

It also states that while vocational degrees tend to have higher employment outcomes than generalist degrees in the short term “the gap in employment rates between those with vocational and generalist degrees diminishes over time”.

80 per cent of students following their passions

This research follows earlier findings from the Universities Admission Centre Student Lifestyle Report. It found 81 per cent of the nearly 14,000 Year 12 students interviewed said passion would guide their choices for further study.

Four in five of last year’s high school graduates have said passion is their leading influence when choosing a degree, showing that the previous government’s attempts to drive enrolment numbers using fee increases was always likely to fail.

These statistics further disprove claims fee increases would guide student preferences under the JRG.

DASSH is calling for university fee reform under the upcoming Accord to be undertaken by the Federal Government given the lack of evidence linking fee levels to job outcomes and career success more broadly.

Productivity Commission observations

In addition to results from the above reports, the Productivity Commission has recently made several key points about student fees being used as incentives in its 5-year Productivity Inquiry: From learning to growth. In this report the Commission finds that students are best placed to judge for themselves what education suits their interests and their aspirations.

The report rightly points out: “Government subsidies for tertiary education could be allocated more efficiently and equitably, without necessarily increasing the total amount of public funding.”

“Currently, governments set differential subsidies based on targeting public benefits and skill needs, but these have little impact on student choice because income-contingent loans eliminate upfront fees and make price differences less salient.”

Our members believe attempting to manipulate student preferences through price signalling is counterproductive to the aims of having an efficient and high-quality tertiary system.

DASSH strongly supports the evidence in the report that shows human capital will be more in demand in the future than ever before.

“As our reliance on the services sector expands, people’s capabilities (‘human capital’) will play a more important role than physical capital in improving productivity,” the report states.

“General and foundational skills will continue to underpin the workforce’s contribution to productivity, and as routine tasks are automated, newly created jobs will increasingly rely on areas such as interpersonal skills, critical thinking, working with more complex equipment, and accomplished literacy and numeracy.”

The skills described in the report are derived through the education of students in the arts, social sciences and humanities. It is impossible to know in advance what the value of these disciplines or specific courses offered within our degrees will be in part because of the rapidly changing nature of the labour market and the innovative ways in which knowledge is put to use in society.

The current price settings for arts, humanities and social sciences degrees were set without any evidence that they would work nor any consideration about the impact on current or future students. 

Those degrees are valued by employers and provide a strong intellectual foundation for long term career success. The JRG punishes students who want to pursue studies that are beneficial to them and society more broadly and a new and more equitable pricing level should be developed.

The Federal Government must commit to abandoning the policy which is putting our students at a significant financial disadvantage.


Nick Bisley is President of the Australasian Council of Deans of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities. He is Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences and Professor of International Relations at La Trobe University. His research focuses primarily on Asia’s international relations, great power politics and Australian foreign and defence policy. Nick is a member of the advisory board of China Matters and a member of the Council for Security and Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific. Nick is the author of many works on international relations, including Issues in 21st Century World Politics, 3rd Edition (Palgrave, 2017), Great Powers in the Changing International Order (Lynne Rienner, 2012), and Building Asia’s Security (IISS/Routledge, 2009, Adelphi No. 408). He regularly contributes to and is quoted in national and international media including The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, CNN and Time Magazine

Why Labor must reconsider the Job-Ready Graduates package now

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The Coalition Government used the pandemic-induced shock to introduce legislative measures,  commonly known as the Job-Ready Graduates (JRG) package, to  restructure the nation’s higher education (HE) funding arrangements. It had failed to get these reforms up on three separate occasions.

The change was primarily framed as an intervention to ensure that higher education – and its graduates – would be ready to help the nation avert COVID economic shock. JRG would  address the skills shortage, weak university/industry linkages, growth in the school leaver population, and geographical attainment gaps in the sector. 

In a recently published paper (Crisis and Policy Imaginaries: Higher Education Reform during a Pandemic), we critically review the JRG package through the lens of crisis and policy response. 

We ask what was seen as a problem to be fixed by the Morrison Government, what policy responses were introduced, and what was conceived as a desirable future enabled by this policy reform.  

Limited public consultation

To begin with, the change process did not pass through proper public consultation. Policy initiatives may come from top-down (e.g. in the form of political narratives and theories) as well as from bottom-up (e.g. in the form of social movements and public submissions that draw on shared conceptions about what society is and should be).

In the case of the JRG package, the process proceeded with no genuine public consultation: the Government allowed a mere five working days for public submissions. Notably, except for arguments on social work education, none of the critical issues raised by the sector was considered in the final bill. 

Crisis opportunism

Before 2020, the Coalition Government tried and failed at restructuring the HE funding on three occasions.  When the COVID-19 pandemic hit the sector hard, the Government seized the moment to make its fourth attempt at reform. The pandemic exposed the vulnerability of Australian HE. Many people were also distracted by the health crisis. The situation presented an opportunity to impose unpopular reforms. The reformers were keen not to waste a crisis.

The policy selling point was that the health crisis (COVID-19) coupled with fast-paced technological changes in the workplace pose a risk to national economic productivity and competitiveness. The policy purported to provide a solution. 

In essence, the JRG package signifies what Boin and colleagues refer to as ‘crisis exploitation’. The Government framed the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated fear of an economic downturn as a crisis to sell old policy packages and imaginaries. 

As Fassin notes, in a time of crisis, a policy narrative has elements of both temporality (triggering a sense of urgency) and affectivity (triggering anxiety). Crisis narratives make drastic policy changes possible by creating a shared perception of threats or opportunities. We find that crisis opportunism was cynically exploited by the former government to prosecute an old policy agenda. 

Recycled Imaginaries

Imaginaries represent shared visions of desirable futures. When it generates new imaginaries, a crisis can be transformative. Sargeant speaks of crisis as ’a moment of discontinuity’ that requires ‘an act of imagination large enough to envisage a future different from the continuities mandated by the past, and powerful enough to generate a strategy sufficient to chart a path towards this future’ (emphasis added).

In this vein, the JRG reform relies on recycled imaginaries and a tired lexicon. The JRG agenda was essentially set years before the COVID-19 crisis, and the desirable futures outlined in the policy are largely a rehearsal of old political arguments for increased efficiency, productivity, and accountability.

The Morrison Government used the pandemic as an opportunity to (re)articulate its pre-existing neoliberal policy imperatives of privatising and economising HE. Public spending on HE is linked to the need for maximising economic returns. JRG envisages HE as a subset of the economy:  universities should support the nation’s economic goals of productivity and competitiveness by producing more graduates in selected ‘fields of economic productivity’.

In essence, the rupture caused by the pandemic was both a crisis seized opportunistically and an opportunity lost by the Australian Government for visionary reform. In justifying the timeliness of the reform, rather than constructing new imaginaries, the Government reactivated old neoliberal visions of society and the economy. 

Issue omission

In a policy process, the framing of issues matters. As Edwards notes, ‘It is only once a policy issue is accepted as a problem that people can ask, “What can we do about it?”’

In this respect, the JRG package can be defined by the issue it omits from consideration.  For instance, while the reform advocates for innovation, productivity, and competitiveness, issues of research and research training receive no attention. The urgency of decarbonising the economy and the role that universities might play in this was ignored in the reform. No substantive reference is made to the perils of climate change, its impact on employment, public health, agriculture, water and energy, the environment, and all areas of social and economic activity.

Further, through price signalling, the reform privileges STEM fields and unfairly undervalues the importance of humanities and social sciences. The economy is seen as entirely constitutive of the nation, allowing little space for culture, society, or genuine political debate. The focus on teaching, health sciences and STEM fields is justifiable. The issue is not with expecting universities to be responsive and adaptive to the nation’s needs and priorities. Instead, an excessive emphasis on technical training risks the emergence of generations with little or no regard for democracy, social cohesion, and environmental justice. As Ronald J. Daniels, the president of Johns Hopkins University, argues, universities play a critical role in fostering democracy by way of supporting ‘social mobility, citizenship education, the stewardship of facts, and the cultivation of pluralistic, diverse communities’. 

Technology calls for adaptive humans and effective adoption of technology requires expertise from social sciences as well as STEM fields. Technological changes indeed raise the skill requirements of jobs, but human capital (the educational attainment of the workforce) is a narrow parameter of progress. A cohesive, prosperous, and free society is much greater than the economic activities underpinning it. 

The JRG package also frames equity issues reductively. The complex and nuanced equity categories articulated in previous policies are reduced to a crude city/rural divide. 

Workforce nativism

Elements of the reform are also nativist in orientation. The policy discourse around the legislation rehearses a range of nativist tropes about Australian universities for Australian students and Australian jobs for Australian graduates.  This obscures the vital roles played by international students and immigration in Australian economic and social development over our history. The nativist vision seeks to return to a period in which the HE sector was not dependent on the revenue generated by international students’ fees without providing the funding which universities turned to international tuition fees to replace.

This nativism echoes the populist anti-globalisation sentiment we are witnessing globally. Elements of nativist imaginary also evoke an earlier exclusionary, racist, and xenophobic period of Australian history, including the White Australia regime that persisted for much of the 20th century.

The Job-ready Graduates Discussion Paper stressed: “A strong economic recovery will depend on knowledge-intensive jobs held by Australians who are highly skilled, creative and flexible.” However, this nativist rhetoric failed to acknowledge Australia’s historical dependence on immigration to compensate for a skills deficit, especially in STEM fields. This might not come as a surprise given the anti-immigration agenda and populist inclination of the ruling Coalition. 

In closing

A moment of a significant rupture may also be  a moment of bold measures. It challenges the legitimacy of the status quo and puts pressure on the ruling elite to devise coping strategies. A crisis also demands new imaginaries–new shared visions of the desirable futures. Taylor identifies two pathways of imaginary formation: new theories that inspire new practices or reinterpretation of existing practices that lead to a new vision of the future. During a crisis, as our analysis shows, those in power may also choose to enact pre-existing imaginaries, responding to new challenges with old answers. 

In our view, the JRG package was a cynical exercise at several levels, most obviously in its seizing of the moment of the pandemic to prosecute a change that it has been pursuing since at least 2014. In emphasising market-based competition, personal choice, and human capital, the policy package overlooked the importance of such inclusive goals as civic cooperation, shared commitment, and human capability. 

From here to where? It appears that another round of HE reform is on the horizon. The new Federal Government has an opportunity to reimagine the future and purpose of Australian HE. We urge boldness. Australia’s world class HE sector stands ready to engage creatively and constructively with government, the community, and current and future students. Australian universities are well-positioned to  contribute to a bold change agenda: one which tackles the skills gap and the host of other actions needed for Australia to continue to thrive as a democracy which acts in the interests of its citizens and the planet.  To that end, extensive sector-wide consultation is critical. 

 

Tebeje Molla is a senior lecturer in the School of Education, Deakin University. His research areas include student equity, teacher professional learning, and policy analysis. His work is informed by critical sociology and the capability approach to social justice and human development.

Denise Cuthbert is the Associate Deputy Vice Chancellor, Research Training and Development at RMIT and has published extensively on higher education policy and practice.

      Denise Cuthbert, RMIT University

Why is there so much talk about teachers right now? Because we are afraid of them

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The federal minister for education Jason Clare convened a roundtable to solve the teacher shortage on the eve of the new government’s Job Summit. Items on the agenda? It wasn’t hard to go past working conditions, status, and a growing, chronic teacher shortage as the impetus for history-making industrial action and considerable media coverage.

Concerns about teachers’ working conditions have themselves arisen out of a context in which teacher quality, figures of the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ teacher, the fear of indoctrinating teachers, have been increasingly constructed as ‘policy problems’ to be addressed. ‘The teacher’, it seems, is becoming one of the most contested figures in contemporary education policy debates.

We have recently edited a Special Issue of the journal Education Policy Analysis Archives in which the collected papers reflect on the current positioning of teachers across a range of international policy contexts. This journal, unlike the majority of academic journals, is run by a university and is entirely open access, which means you can read the full issue. You can also watch a video introduction to the issue. 

Look at Australia, for example

In our introduction to the issue, we use Australia as an example of a country in which responsibility has been placed on teachers to ‘fix’ perceived educational crises, often through policy reform that requires teachers to be ‘better’ trained, more professional, more accountable and more standardised. Here, the past fifteen years of education policy has featured: the introduction of standardised census testing of students via the National Assessment Programme, the results of which are made public via the My School website; the introduction of national teaching standards and accreditation requirements; and repeated inquiries into initial teacher education, with the introduction of program standards and, more recently, mandated teacher performance assessments.

Why are teachers so central to education policy?

Given all this policy change, we think it’s reasonable to claim that teachers are the targets of much political and popular consternation. But what is it about teachers that makes them such a matter of attention and concern, and how does the current political climate contribute to these (often unrealistic) expectations?

According to Wodak, populism has an “appeal to the ‘common man/woman’ as opposed to the elites”. She has argued that in populist regimes, ‘difference’ is denied and the ‘common’ is valorised, creating “a demos which exists above and beyond the divides and diversities of social class and religion, gender and generation”.

We argue that it is possible to view schooling (and teaching) as a logical site of public commentary because of the common experience amongst most populations. Indeed, it is often suggested that everyone knows what it is like to be a teacher because everyone has gone to school. As Lortie put it, there is an ‘apprenticeship of observation’ in school education that means everyone, regardless of whether they become a teacher or not, forms ideas about the work of teaching simply because of their ongoing interactions with teachers throughout a significant portion of their lives. In terms of populist tendencies, this widespread experience and presumed knowledge about how schools should operate, positions teachers as a common ground upon which critique can be aimed.

At the same time, teachers increasingly bear the burden for the economic, social and political wellbeing of the countries within which they teach. As the global economy becomes understood as essentially knowledge-based, the need to track and compare student achievement within and across nation-states has taken on a broad prominence typified by, for instance, the regular Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests run by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Indeed, teachers are an increasing point of focus for the OECD, which now also runs the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) examining teachers’ work and working conditions. This, we argue, reflects a revived and rearticulated emphasis on the teacher.

The teacher as an object of fear

Yet despite this apparent importance, teaching does not often become an object of respect, but rather of fear, emblematic of growing national and international anxieties around knowledge, success and the moral character of the next generation. This puts the figure of the teacher in an uncomfortable position. Paradoxically, teaching is known to all (“anyone could do it!”), yet also unknowable (as a university-based, complex and contested form of expertise). Teachers’ success is supposedly important for global competition, but teaching is not necessarily viewed as worthy of professional status and fair working conditions. Within this context, ongoing attempts to control, standardise and responsibilise teaching and teachers becomes a rational, even urgent pursuit. So much so that the resulting hyper-focus on teachers-as-solution has created what Wodak calls a “fear ‘market’”, where teachers become the target of an expanding “cottage industry” of commercial products (e.g., professional development materials, data-tracking platforms, etc.).

It’s time to destabilise global narratives of teachers

The papers in our Special Issue explore teachers’ work across contexts including the United States, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific. The journal in which the issue has been published is based at Arizona State University, meaning that the inclusion of studies from places like Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands may make somewhat unfamiliar reading for many subscribers. This was intentional.

In Australia, education policy is often developed and analysed in reference to what Lingard has termed our common ‘reference societies’ of the US and UK. As researchers and authors, we are routinely asked to make our work ‘relevant’ by situating it in relation to such dominant international reform contexts. But what would happen if this demand was reversed? Should research emanating from dominant contexts instead be required to make itself relevant to more diverse, local spaces, and what analytical possibilities might this open up? Possibly, what is needed is to reimagine teachers and schooling in ways that are less limited by the systems and structures that have led us to this point. Perhaps it is time for teachers and those who research them to truly warrant their positioning as an object of fear, by destabilising the taken-for-granted terms under which they work.

From left: Meghan Stacey is senior lecturer in the UNSW School of Education, researching in the fields of the sociology of education and education policy. Taking a particular interest in teachers, her research considers how teachers’ work is framed by policy, as well as the effects of such policy for those who work with, within and against it. Mihajla Gavin is a senior lecturer at UTS Business School. Her PhD, completed in 2019, examined how teacher trade unions have responded to neoliberal education reform. Her current research focuses on the restructuring of teachers’ work and conditions of work, worker voice, and women and employment relations. Jessica Gerrard is an associate professor at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education. Jessica researches the changing formations, and lived experiences, of social inequalities in relation to education, activism, work and unemployment. She works across the disciplines of sociology, history and policy studies with an interest in critical methodologies and theories. Anna Hogan is senior research fellow in the School of Teacher Education and Leadership at the Queensland University of Technology. Her research focuses on education privatisation and commercialisation. She currently works on a number of research projects, including investigating philanthropy in Australian public schooling, the privatisation of global school provision, and the intensification of teachers’ work. Jessica Holloway is senior research and ARC DECRA Fellow at the Australian Catholic University. Her research draws on political theory and policy sociology to investigate: (1) how metrics, data and digital tools produce new conditions, practices and subjectivities, especially as this relates to teachers and schools, and (2) how teachers and schools are positioned to respond to the evolving and emerging needs of their communities.

Here’s what a brave new minister for education could do right away to fix the horrific teacher shortage

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The new Federal Minister for Education Jason Clare announced last Friday he would convene a Teacher Workforce Roundtable focussed on tackling the nationwide teacher shortage, to be held on August 12. The roundtable will include principals, teachers and education experts.

The critical shortage of teachers is a crisis of our own making. 

We knew the teaching workforce was ageing a long time ago and we knew we would reach a point where we would have so many teachers retiring that we would need to increase the number entering to make up the gap. 

Too many pundits are blaming the stress of the pandemic – but this is not the consequence of COVID. It is a failure of workforce planning by successive governments and now we all have to take some responsibility for – and find new ways – of working together to address the problem.

First, let me say that the ministers, both Federal and State, must urgently address the disparity between state schools and private schools in the recruitment process.

As head of the University of Sydney School of Education and Social Work, I observe closely what happens to students in their final year who are able to apply for Conditional accreditation, and to teach up to a recommended 0.6 of a full time teacher’s load. Some of my colleagues have wisely pointed out the risks of mixing work and study, and the potential to hasten burnout.  

The final year, with its long placement (internship), and opportunities for well-managed Conditional accreditation, is also a great opportunity for schools to assess a student teacher’s capacity and whether they are likely to fit within the school culture. 

Independent schools use this as a kind of probation period, and some provide scholarships to students in the final year of their teaching degrees AND, if they work out well,  guarantee them permanent, secure jobs. That’s not something public school principals are able to do. I hear from so many public school principals who say they would love to be able to offer similar incentives.

Instead, the majority of young students eager to stay in the public system have to work years as casuals before they can get a permanent secure job. We have outstanding student teachers who are committed to the public system but the public system is not committed to them.

Why is the public system so hamstrung? Our students, not just at Sydney University but across the nation, should be snapped up and looked after, instead of being abandoned to such a casual approach.

We need to value the contributions of those who have committed to a career in education. Instead, there is a chorus of critics. The immediate previous federal minister for education Stuart Robert attacked public school teachers as duds without a shred of evidence. While it is pleasing to note that the new minister has a vastly different approach, the general attitude of politicans and pundits is poor. As my colleague Nicole Mockler has written elsewhere, there is a lot of focus on “teacher quality” but none on system quality. Poor performance is blamed on “teachers themselves, rather than to the system in which they practise”.

As Mockler says: “It has been used to justify tighter controls on who enters teaching, denigrate teachers and evade difficult questions of equity and funding.”

For a moment, at the height of lockdown, I thought that changed. The work of teachers was valued, particularly by parents trying to teach their children at home. Suddenly everyone understood how hard it was to teach just one or two children. Imagine 30 in a classroom at once.

But that momentary shift in attitude appears to have disappeared and there has been a return to denigrating the profession, those who enter teaching, and those who teach teachers. This has an influence on recruitment and an impact on young people’s choices. Why would you join a profession that is so lacking in value and respect. 

We also need to do a much better job looking after and retaining the teachers we have. Almost two-thirds (59%) of teachers surveyed from New South Wales, the Northern Territory and South Australia indicated that they either intended to leave the profession before they retire, or were unsure if they would stay until retirement. If we think the problem is bad now, imagine what it will be like if those teachers do leave.

Public education must be made more attractive to our graduates but also to the teachers who are already in our public schools. It is difficult to maintain a steady flow into the public school system for the reasons I’ve outlined above – but even teachers early in their careers are deterred by the lack of security and flexibility. The incentives to work in regional, rural or remote areas are not enough to attract and keep teachers. Many of our graduates want to make a difference but they also need to be able to look after themselves and their families. Without any prospect of a permanent position, other systems and occupations become too attractive, especially when they offer higher starting and award rates, and more opportunities for earlier progression to higher rates of pay. This is especially so in the current tight labour market.

This is what poor workforce planning looks like.

It is not the time to shake up initial teacher education because it is not the problem causing a shortage in teachers, and we must not risk undermining the quality of these programs or of the graduates they produce.

We can have confidence in initial teacher education in this country. It is in very good shape. There is too much focus on the intake into teacher education. The fact is that, in NSW for example, school leavers wanting to enter an education degree must have three band fives in their HSC (including English) or equivalent – and those who don’t must do well in the first year of university studies before they are admitted. 

We can also have confidence in the quality of our graduates because of the standards they have to meet to become accredited. But what we must do is mentor our new graduates. Give them additional time for preparation, to continue to learn the craft of teaching. Don’t just throw them into the deep end and expect them to swim, because the job of teaching is complex and difficult and without proper support they are likely to not thrive, and may not survive.

It is great that new federal education minister, Jason Clare, has called a meeting of his state counterparts and other key stakeholders because to solve the teacher shortage, we must all  work together and be solution-focussed. The Labor Party has committed to new ‘universities accord’. What better challenge to meet first through this collaborative approach than bringing all stakeholders together to fix the teaching workforce crisis?  

This can’t just be another opportunity to continue unhelpful criticism of teachers or of young people who choose to be teachers or of initial teacher education. We must stop criticising people who are committed to teaching.

But there is something which can be done immediately in schools to help address the crisis. We can employ many more paraprofessionals, who can undertake the tasks that teachers currently do that don’t require a teaching qualification. Relieving teachers of these time-consuming administrative tasks is likely to assist in retaining our existing teachers.

There is also something that can be done in funding arrangements. State health systems receive large amounts of Commonwealth funding for teaching, training and research activities which occur in public hospital services. NSW alone gets $750m this year and the Commonwealth hands over $2billion nationally for it. This funding is provided to state health systems in recognition of the critical importance of education, training and research to the ongoing quality and sustainability of our health system nationally. This kind of funding is not available to school systems. 

Pay our teachers better. Improve their conditions. Invest in training and research in our public, catholic and independent school systems to improve quality and a pipeline of skilled graduates to renew our ageing teaching workforce. Teachers are striking because their pay and conditions are not adequate for the work they do. Entice back the teachers who have left by easing the burden of accreditation. Drop so many of the barriers we have.

The deans of education across Australian universities are wanting to work in cooperation with systems and with ministers. We are keen to do our bit by continuing to produce high quality graduates who will help to fill the teaching shortage.

The views expressed here in this blog are those of the author alone and are not made on behalf of or are intended to represent the views of the University of Sydney.

Debra Hayes is professor of education and equity, and head of the University of Sydney School of Education and Social Work.  Her most recent book (with Ruth Lupton) is Great Mistakes in Education Policy: How to avoid them in the Future (Policy Press, 2021). She tweets at @DrDebHayes.