Teach for Australia: the myth of success

There has been a lot of media coverage recently concerning the Teach for Australia (TFA) program, some of which may have had you believe that it is widespread and a roaring success. It is neither.

The Australian scheme is based on the Teach for America (TFAmerica) program, which began in 1990. This takes non-education degree graduates, puts them on a salary for two years, calls them associates, gives them a six-week course in teacher preparation and then embeds them in hard-to-staff schools.

In Australia, the former federal government started the TFA program to explore alternative pathways into teaching. TFA associates continue studying during their two years in a school, but during that time they are in charge of a class, without a registered teacher being present. A mentor (0.1 FTE in the first year, 0.05 in the second year) is appointed from the school’s existing staff.

As any QTU member would know, kids in disadvantaged schools need the best-trained and most experienced teachers. Unsurprisingly, American education expert Linda Darling-Hammond, while visiting Australia in 2011, reported that disadvantaged communities see TFAmerica as just another facet of the educational inequality experienced by their young people.

TFA also has a much higher rate of graduates leaving teaching than standard teacher preparation courses. The original ACER report on TFA (2011) showed that of the 45 entrants in the first cohort (2010-2011), only 26 entered into full time teaching positions as of February 2012; under 60 per cent of the initial cohort. By May 2012, The Australian was reporting that the number remaining in the classroom after two years was “about 20”. In contrast, a recent QCT report (November 2013) indicated that only 15 per cent of those education graduates granted provisional registration in 2008 were no longer on the Queensland Register four years later.

Consequently, the first two ACER reports on TFA pointed out that “the TFA pathway is a relatively costly teacher education option for government”. Even the third and latest ACER report states that “in terms of teacher education, the TFA pathway involves relatively high financial outlays by government”.

In reality, the TFA program is another example of taking a US idea and trying to make it work in the clearly different Australian education context. In the USA, even today, unqualified or underqualified “teachers” can work in schools. In Queensland, for at least the past 40 years we have had qualified, registered teachers in classrooms. In fact, it was a state government proposal for an eight-week course to provide teachers in shortage areas that lead to the formation of the Queensland registration body in the 1970s.

Alarmingly, the former and present federal governments refer to teacher registration standards as a barrier to “flexibility”. This view of teacher registration certainly contradicts the present federal government’s commitment to quality teaching and learning.

Since the Teach for Australia program began in 2010, 175 associates have been placed in 52 schools. It has not run in Queensland because the Queensland College of Teachers (QCT) did not believe that the six-week preparation of TFA associates made them eligible for teacher registration.

The Queensland Government is now looking at the legislation covering the QCT and hopefully will continue to ensure that only graduates who have completed high-quality university education courses are considered for registration. After all, our Education Minister would not support untrained dentists walking into school dental vans, so I am sure he can see the need for fully trained teachers in our schools.

The most recent ACER report on TFA says that scaling up of TFA to other states “assumes the cooperation of other jurisdictions. Legislative barriers remain in Queensland and New South Wales is opposed to unqualified teachers in classrooms”.

The QTU, the AEU and the NSW Teachers Federation are keen for these so called “barriers” to remain.

Julie Brown
Vice-President

Queensland Teachers' Journal, Vol 119 No 5, 18 July 2014, p15