Teacher training should be taken over by the Federal Government, says business.
AUSTRALIA'S top business group has urged the Federal Government to seize control of teacher training by introducing national standards because progress to improve teacher quality is too slow.
In a damning 52-page analysis of teacher training, the Business Council of Australia is calling for radical federal intervention in an area controlled by state education departments and university education faculties.
The policy paper, Teaching Talent, prepared by the Australian Council for Educational Research, says although there is strong agreement that teacher quality is fundamental to lifting student results, "it is difficult to find evidence of coherent, concerted, co-ordinated policy efforts at state and federal levels focused on teacher quality".
"Accountability for ensuring quality teachers and school leaders is unclear and diffuse... State teacher registration bodies responsible for the quality of entrants to the profession have little power to implement rigorous, independent procedures for accrediting teacher education courses.
"Teacher registration is a key quality-assurance mechanism, but is merely a rubber-stamp operation in most states and territories."
The BCA paper says more than 100inquiries and reviews of teacher education have been done in Australia since the '70s, with many courses being criticised for being overly theoretical, fragmented and having little connection to classroom practice.
Despite the findings and recommendations of the inquiries often being consistent, teacher education has hardly changed as a result.
Current methods used to assess teacher education courses lack the capacity to influence the quality of the courses.
The policy paper also says low entry standards for courses and flat teacher salaries are discouraging the brightest people from entering the profession and contribute to its low status.
Unlike the world's top-performing school systems, Australia is recruiting large numbers of primary teachers from the middle third of high-school graduates rather than the top third. And the paper says university selection quotas are not helping efforts to lift the quality of recruits.
"The current practice whereby universities are free to enrol students in teacher education courses until they fill course quotas, regardless of academic ability, clearly needs to be reviewed."
Source Link on the NET
Technorati Tags: school, Australia
In a damning 52-page analysis of teacher training, the Business Council of Australia is calling for radical federal intervention in an area controlled by state education departments and university education faculties.
The policy paper, Teaching Talent, prepared by the Australian Council for Educational Research, says although there is strong agreement that teacher quality is fundamental to lifting student results, "it is difficult to find evidence of coherent, concerted, co-ordinated policy efforts at state and federal levels focused on teacher quality".
"Accountability for ensuring quality teachers and school leaders is unclear and diffuse... State teacher registration bodies responsible for the quality of entrants to the profession have little power to implement rigorous, independent procedures for accrediting teacher education courses.
"Teacher registration is a key quality-assurance mechanism, but is merely a rubber-stamp operation in most states and territories."
The BCA paper says more than 100inquiries and reviews of teacher education have been done in Australia since the '70s, with many courses being criticised for being overly theoretical, fragmented and having little connection to classroom practice.
Despite the findings and recommendations of the inquiries often being consistent, teacher education has hardly changed as a result.
Current methods used to assess teacher education courses lack the capacity to influence the quality of the courses.
The policy paper also says low entry standards for courses and flat teacher salaries are discouraging the brightest people from entering the profession and contribute to its low status.
Unlike the world's top-performing school systems, Australia is recruiting large numbers of primary teachers from the middle third of high-school graduates rather than the top third. And the paper says university selection quotas are not helping efforts to lift the quality of recruits.
"The current practice whereby universities are free to enrol students in teacher education courses until they fill course quotas, regardless of academic ability, clearly needs to be reviewed."
Source Link on the NET
Technorati Tags: school, Australia
0 comments:
Post a Comment