Putting unqualified teachers in front of a class of students would have devastating consequences for a child’s education — it would mean missed opportunities which that student would lose forever, Australian Education Union Federal President Correna Haythorpe said.
Applicants for the federal government’s High Achieving Teachers Program will not need any type of tertiary qualification before entering the classroom, only “professional or academic experience” gained outside of teaching. There will also be no minimum training requirements for candidates before they begin teaching.
“No student should be used as a teaching experiment by the Turnbull Government,” Ms Haythorpe said.
“Minister Birmingham should learn the lesson from his first unqualified teachers program, Teach for Australia, which has proven to be a crushing $77 million failure,” Ms Haythorpe said.
“The best thing Minister Birmingham could do to help the teaching profession to improve student outcomes would be to restore the $1.9 billion he took from public school funding in 2018 and 2019,” Ms Haythorpe said.
“We also need a concerted strategy to improve the recruitment and retention of teachers across all curriculum areas,” she said.
“This should involve comprehensive workforce planning, targeted Initial Teacher Education recruitment, better pay and conditions for staff, and attraction and retention measures to provide fully-qualified teachers for schools experiencing shortages.
“Also, it is critical that all schools receive 100 per cent of the Schooling Resource Standard, as well as the capital funding required to ensure that they can offer high quality 21st-century learning environments,” Ms Haythorpe said.
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