The Australian editorial today reflects on the lessons from our new report, Freedom to Teach ($): CLASSROOM teaching quality is the main focus of the world’s best performing school systems. That is hardly surprising because research and experience show it influences students’ outcomes more than class sizes or school facilities. Good teaching also goes a long way towards overcoming the socioeconomic disadvantages faced by many students. Given the importance of attracting and retaining quality teachers, especially maths and science teachers and other specialists who are in short supply, the Institute of Public Affairs has raised important issues in Freedom to Teach, its research report on the work and conditions of Australian teachers. As the IPA found, the current “one-size-fits-all” award-based system is overly rigid, linking wages to years of service rather than paying higher salaries to the best educators. As Australia seeks to improve literacy, numeracy and the rigour of secondary education, the IPA is on the right track in calling for the removal of restrictions that cap the maximum salary classroom teachers can be paid. School principals, its report argues, should have the power to pay financial incentives to attract, retain and reward the best teachers. Current teachers’ awards, it points out, limit the flexibility of schools and principals to respond to the needs of students by limiting the number of hours teachers can teach, the number of days schools can open and restricting the incentives schools can offer to attract teachers. Independent schools and independent state schools have more flexibility than state or Catholic systemic schools, but all basically are subject to the provisions of awards. Parents know good schools or bad schools when their children encounter them, regardless of sector, postcode, class sizes or facilities. Invariably, the factor that makes the difference is the quality of teachers. A rethink in teachers’ pay systems is essential, in conjunction with the curriculum overhaul and improvements in teacher training likely to follow from the federal government’s review of teacher education, led by Australian Catholic University vice-chancellor Greg Craven. That review is likely to recommend tougher standards for accrediting university teaching courses. As IPA executive director John Roskam told Justine Ferrari on yesterday’s front page, existing regulations are so rigid that even a Nobel prize-winning scientist wanting to teach would progress through the system at the same rate as an inexperienced gradate. At the opposite end of the spectrum, outstanding teachers with 10 years of classroom experience hit a glass ceiling when they reach the top of the pay scale. Too often, such professionals are lost to the classroom because they have little incentive to stay. Instead, they seek leadership or administrative positions to improve their incomes. A new career structure is needed, with sufficient flexibility for principals to pay teachers according to their contributions in the classroom. As the IPA report warns, current moves towards merit pay on the basis of teaching standards are proving highly bureaucratic and time consuming for teachers, who are required to collect samples of their work, such as lesson plans, assessment strategies, documentation of classroom behaviour and notes of personal reading and websites visited, and annotate such material to be presented to teacher accreditation authorities. The process also isolates principals from the assessment process.
Posted on: Mon, 29 Dec 2014 23:29:24 +0000
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