Do something.
Responding to the draft National Teacher Workforce Action Plan.
In early November the Education Minister for the Albanese Labor government, Jason Clare, released the draft National Teacher Workforce Action Plan seeking feedback from teachers, principals, parents, and the broader community.
Although the consultation process and draft plan are not without its criticisms (listen to Fiona Longmuir’s interview on the TER podcast below), it is encouraging to see an approach towards democratic means of developing educational policy and change.
In a similar vein to when the Productivity Commission release their 5-year Productivity Inquiry Interim Report, I thought it would be worth sharing my submission of feedback to the draft National Teacher Workforce Plan. If anything to encourage more to do the same (you have by the 1st of December to do so!). This is also why I have decided to write an extra post for this fortnight.
It should be acknowledged that teachers often do not have the time to make submissions towards policy development. Therefore, I think that it is important that schools allow time for teachers to engage with policy that impacts their profession in order to have their voices heard.
Maybe this is something you can suggest to your leadership to fit into your meetings for next week?
An unexpected event.
Now, it just so happens that I wrote my response thinking that I would be able to submit it as a single document. Turns out that making a submission to the draft National Teacher Workforce Action Plan is quite different.
Rather than submitting a single document, you will be prompted to respond with feedback to each Priority Area separately. For each Priority Area there is a check box question (i.e. How effective do you think…) followed by an opportunity below for extra comments.
I was hoping for a final section to add some concluding comments, but ended up getting the message below 🤦♂️.
Unfortunately, the structure and a lot of what I wanted to say in my response (i.e. at the beginning and end) didn’t really fit into any of the specific areas so what you will read below is the collated version of what I actually sent through.
In what would have been my response below (if submissions were a single document), I followed Education Minister Jason Clare’s prompts which asked: What is right? What is wrong? What should we change?
The (collated) submission.
Thank you to the working group for putting together a proposal to assist in addressing the issues currently facing Australian education. It is encouraging to see approaches moving towards a more democratic exploration of what might be done in the present situation to support our students, teachers, schools and communities.
I seek to provide some brief points of feedback to the draft National Teacher Workforce Action Plan, following Education Minister Jason Clare’s prompts, which asked: What is right? What is wrong? What should we change?
What is right?
It is encouraging to see a commitment to recognising the value of teachers (Action 1), an acknowledgement of the demands on the teacher including the burden of policy developments involving more accountability measures (Action 15, 17, 18) and a focus on acknowledging the value of and increasing the diversity of the teaching workforce (Action 1, 6, 11, 12). These are the kinds of issues that have not been clearly visible in recent discourse surrounding teachers and education. Teachers are not simply servants of society but are professionals in their own right, and so should be valued as such. It has been refreshing to see efforts being made by the Education Minister to listen. This is often not the case, as Think Tanks continue to dominate conversations surrounding educational policy. This is a fast way of doing policy, but has the potential to threaten the democratic politics of Australia.
What is wrong?
Although there is a stated commitment in the action plan to recognise teachers, a close reading of the initiatives makes it clear that the current teaching workforce is in actual fact not valued. The meritocratic push for more HALT certifications (Action 4), implies that teachers are not valued yet. I am reminded of Dr Marty Ross’ submission to the Initial Teacher Education (ITE) review, where he states that:
‘“Highly accomplished” does not mean highly accomplished, it means playing the game and playing it safe. Genuinely highly accomplished teachers take risks and make errors and put noses out of joint; these teachers, who are the true leaders, will seldom if ever be recognised by any such system’ (Ross, 2021).
Another concern of mine is that it seems that other professionals are valued more highly than our current teachers (Action 6, 7, 8, 11). Luring professionals from other fields with bursaries, scholarships and the High Achieving Teachers (HAT) program will not provide a sustainable teaching workforce. Trevor Cobbold has previously articulated some very compelling arguments against HAT and Teach for Australia (TFA). However, the program continues to be funded despite its relative failure in achieving its aims.
Even in the case where teachers seem to be valued, it is not our current teachers. Even international teachers are being offered monetary incentives to work in Australia (Action 9), whilst there are no tangible incentives being offered for getting Australia’s very own qualified teachers back into the workforce (Action 23).
Therefore, it is my argument that the very first objective, ‘to recognise the value teachers bring to students, communities and the economy’ is ultimately undermined by a number of the actions proposed in this document.
Last, but certainly not least, there seems to be a discrepancy in the desire to encourage First Nations Australians to enter the teaching profession (Action 1, 2, 11, 12). The main discrepancy lies in the continuation of the expensive hurdle task for teachers known as the Literacy and Numeracy Test for Initial Teacher Education (LANTITE), of which we still don’t know whether the test is the right assessment tool or is even set at the right difficulty level. What we do know however is that First Nations Australians are overrepresented as failing the LANTITE test. Furthermore, multiple Higher Education Providers stated that ‘the test was the reason that some Indigenous ITE students were unable to graduate or left the program, and that this was a major loss for the program and the teaching workforce’ (DESE, p. 14, emphasis added). Yet rather than examining the validity of LANTITE from the evidence we now have, the action plan seeks to unquestionably cement it as a fundamental necessity for ITE students (Action 13). This test needs to be scrapped in order to achieve the aims in relation to First Nations Australians.
What needs to change
The actions proposed here have the potential the increase teachers entering the workforce, but there is no reason to believe that these will reduce the attrition rate of those who enter the system.
There are systemic issues that until resolved, will continue to pull talented and passionate people away from teaching.
Let’s make some valuable calls, make some decisions, let’s not wait for future “evidence” (Action 23).
Let’s do something.
We actually already have a plethora of evidence to make some fairly clear conclusions about what could be done to support Australian teachers, so let’s do it now.
I have made some hints at what decisions could be made to indeed live up to the first objective ‘to recognise the value teachers bring to students, communities and the economy’ but here they are in plain form:
Remove LANTITE.
Remove TFA.
Invest in the present teaching workforce, and more will come. Otherwise, we may just be bringing more teachers into the 60% looking to leave the profession.
Some concluding thoughts
Thank you for taking the time to read this submission, I understand that people are working hard to develop meaningful solutions to manage the current circumstances impacting Australian education. My submission is not intended to undermine those efforts, but to contribute to the challenging, complex and at times contradictory dialogue surrounding teachers and education.
I am hopeful for Australian education and look forward to seeing where these actions might take us.
References
Department of Education, Skills and Employment. (2020). Implementation review of the Literacy and Numeracy test for ITE students: Final report.
Ross, M. (2021). Submission to the ITE Review. Retrieved from https://www.education.gov.au/quality-initial-teacher-education-review/consultations/quality-initial-teacher-education-review-submissions/submission/13003.
thanks Tom, i did not explain properly, there are about 300,000 teachers in OZ so only 1000 have been certified, most likely because they have not applied and don't think it is worth it - https://www.aitsl.edu.au/docs/default-source/certification/certification-snapshot-2022.pdf
gr8 idea for schools to address this in their next meetings. Wondering how the promotion of certification via HALT has go into the recommendations, I don't think there are many classroom teachers putting that forward! Only 1000 teachers out 300,000 applying for that certification since 2012 should say enough.