The Labor Party is sticking to its pre-election theory that raising ATAR entry scores for teaching degrees will lead to improved learning outcomes by attracting “high achievers” to the profession. As a teacher, and a so-called “high achiever”, I can tell you it’s not so simple.
Firstly, an ATAR is just a rank. University ATAR entry scores are set by marketplace demand, not by degree of difficulty. There cannot be a conversation about access to tertiary education in this country without a critique of of its commodification. The perceived crisis in education is not happening in the classroom, it is happening at the point of sale.
This is where the reality of poor pay and working conditions intersects with low enrolment rates. This week, the Grattan Institute released an evidence-based incentives and recruitment package designed with the purpose of attracting high achievers to the profession. The report’s findings bluntly confirm “high achievers choose degrees with high earnings potential, creating a high level of competition that in turn leads to high ATAR entry scores”.
The report offers a plan for how governments can create a “positive reinforcing cycle” by making teaching careers more attractive. Top of the list is increasing top-end pay via the creation of two new roles (“master teacher” and “instructional specialist”), a $10,000 cash-in-hand incentive for high achievers who choose to study teaching, and thirdly to positively promote teaching through a marketing campaign to influence community perception.
According to Grattan, in Australia teaching has historically been most attractive to academic achievers from working class backgrounds in regional areas (that’s me), but enrolments from high rankers across class and geographic divides have plummeted dramatically over the past 10 years. At the guts of the report’s recommendations is a model adopted from Singapore. In Singapore, universities are spoiled for choice; they are able to select the “best” teacher candidates based on an ideal combination of academic and non-academic skills due to the large number of quality applications received.
However, Grattan’s report excludes the challenges experienced by so-called “high achiever” teachers already in the profession. Due to this, Grattan’s recommendations are an ideal remedy for the crisis at the point-of-sale but more needs to be done to address the crisis once these people are in the job.
Our poor working conditions are the result of a trickle-down distrust of teachers. Policymakers are never teachers; they’re career politicians obsessed with standardised data collection and fixated on auditing competency to the detriment of efficacy. Until this is addressed, things won’t improve.
In my experience, there is already a wealth of incredibly innovative, smart and dedicated teachers in schools. But many find themselves leaving the profession, unable or unwilling to put up with the conditions. Poor pay conditions compounded by an impoverished work/life balance are huge factors, but so is the way in which governments have gradually eroded education’s core business: supporting and cultivating a community of effective learners. If bureaucrats and policymakers are at the top of the aforementioned pyramid of trickle-down contempt, then students are at the bottom.
Classrooms are no longer sites of enrichment and learning; they are data mines. There is no community of learners; only over-assessed students and tired teachers walking through jungles of red tape. I’ve spent the best part of the past four years navigating the blunderbuss accreditation process inflicted on teachers in NSW. The bulk of this has involved me explaining to principals and executives on six-figure salaries what is required of them to support new teachers. This is not my job. So much for a process that apparently “has minimal impact of workload”.
If the objective of accreditation is to uphold teaching standards and make better teachers, then my experience is a thorough testimony to its failure. Accreditation in NSW and similar processes across the states is more an exercise in banging your head against a wall of bureaucracy than it is an exercise in professional development.
With the time I’ve spent on accreditation I could have applied for numerous jobs outside of teaching. With the money I’ve spent on accreditation I could have bought a return flight to Hawaii. With the mental health that has been negatively impacted by the multi-year ordeal that is navigating accreditation, I could have been a healthier, more effective teacher. And increasing ATAR entry scores tomorrow isn’t going to fix that.
What do you think of the Grattan Institute’s proposed ideas for “fixing” the teaching industry? Write to boss@crikey.com.au with your full name and thoughts.
Thanks Dan for a heartfelt and entirely sensible discussion of your experience. I fear however that you are letting off the politicians, bureaucrats, assessment industry and commentariat altogether too lightly. The deepening crisis in our public education system is an entirely predictable, and intentional, outcome of thirty years of policy decisions by both Liberal and Labour governments at state and federal level.
Teaching is a craft. It can only be learned by doing. It takes at least five years in the classroom for a teacher to develop the resources and gain the experience they need to begin to master the craft. To achieve mastery the apprentice needs the leadership, guidance, support, solace and experience of the master craftswoman. The fantasy that a high ATAR score and an extra 10,000 bucks equates to a good teacher is an indictment of the shallow, cynical emptiness which passes for expertise in the academy.
An ATAR score is no measure of passion for learning. It does not indicate love of specialist knowledge or skill domains, which in itself can only be truly tested in the forge. It places no value on emotional intelligence, tolerance, patience, empathy, or the capacity to see the beautiful soul concealed beneath an armour of unlovely behaviours or negative attitudes. None of these qualities have any value – nor indeed are they even recognisable to the sociopathic bean counters who we have allowed to rule us. They are scorned by their bureaucratic enablers who can only recognise them in their absence from their own empty souls. They are hated by the parasites of the assessment industry who make a killing out of selling meaningless normative measurements.
Teaching is a craft, but education is collaboration. It is a partnership of the learner, the family, the school, and the community. The education of each young person is the responsibility of the whole community. When was the last time you saw a contemporary politician take responsibility for anything?
Accreditation – is a disease that infects all of Australian professional and industrial enterprises – it is a billion dollar industry that produces nothing and actually saps the economy by decreasing the buy power and disposable income of all employees – another form of government levy.
There should be an investigation of all these barnacle industries which have been established as aberrant QANGOs – dare I say Royal Commission is needed – as that is the only way governments seem to be given any direction for managing anything .
Young exteachers of my acquaintance cite poor pay and conditions, excessive workload, increasing and increasingly meaningless administrative tasks, constant and increasing demands for unpaid extra activities, constant accountability, learning and teaching becoming a joyless chore, policy handed down from people who clearly have never been near a classroom…
Sadly, the ones who leave are often from among the most clever, energetic and creative young teachers. Several I know have better paying jobs with way better conditions in related fields. They’ll never go back. Why would they?
There’s a weird assumption, practised through the Teach for Australia phenomenon and now advocated for by the Grattan Institute, that smart dudes can learn teaching on the job, or as freshly minted teachers. They are placed in extraordinarily demanding learning/teaching environments and expected to thrive. The mentality is that teaching method and teaching approach (pedagogy) are the same thing: if you have the knowledge, you can teach it. Nothing could be further from the truth. I have known new teachers who have given up teaching very quickly because of this approach. They find themselves in impossible situations. Money does not buy job satisfaction. The adverse conditions in schools already addressed both in the article and the comments must be attended to before either higher ATARs or higher wages will have any impact at all on the profession. The issue of constant assessment, revolves around the core subjects of English and mathematics at the expense for both teachers and students of a holistic education, including the arts, physical education and the humanities. (Ah yes, ‘soft skills’!) Whilst ever we pressure students to achieve within a limited learning sphere, and teachers to teach with achievement as the major driver, there will be no improvement. The Australian and state curricula advocate for a holistic learning approach and for the meeting of individual needs whereby all students are valued on the progress they make as idiosyncratic human beings. Education policy, however, demands the reverse. Students can be denied access to areas of learning where they would excel and are made, instead, to feel like failures. How can they possibly feel motivated to learn? No wonder both teachers and students are anxious and depressed. https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/teachers-warn-they-re-overwhelmed-by-mental-health-problems-in-schools-20190821-p52jgj.html
As a beginning teacher I looked at the accreditation requirements & thought “I have been a competent working adult for 25 years. If this is my value to the department, well there’s a company that wants me on its management next month .”