9 May 2022
Catholic education has commended the Coalition and Australian Labor Party for policies aimed at growing and strengthening the teaching profession to improve student learning outcomes.
National Catholic Education executive director Jacinta Collins said, during the election campaign, the
Coalition and Labor have announced policies to address the growing shortage of teachers, to attract high achieving students to the profession and respond to the recommendations of the Quality Initial Teacher Education Review.
“We know from the Quality Initial Teacher Education Review that we need to attract high-quality, diverse
candidates to the teaching profession, supported by evidenced-based preparation and training,” Ms
Collins said.
“Teaching is the largest in-school influence on student learning outcomes and a clear focus on attracting and retaining quality teachers, coupled with quality teacher preparation, ongoing professional
development and mentoring for early career teachers, will help strengthen the profession and address
some of the current challenges for Australian education.”
Labor has set a target to double the number of high achievers choosing teaching over a decade; provide $71.5 million to boost the High Achieving Teachers Program to retrain mid-career professionals into teaching; will offer over $50 million in bursaries for the ‘best and brightest’ to study teaching; offer
pathways including part-time salary and mentoring for high demand specialities like maths and science,
and focus on attracting teachers to regional areas. Labor will also work to build better career paths for
Master Teachers and invest $24.2 million to respond to the Quality Initial Teacher Education Review,
including expanding Quality Teaching Rounds and developing new micro-credentials of classroom
management and phonics.
The Coalition has committed to provide $40 million to support 700 new Teach for Australia teachers and 60 new teachers through La Trobe’s Nexus program; $13.4 million to support changes to accreditation standards and the return of a one-year Graduate Diploma of Education to support mid-career professionals into teaching; invest $10.8 million to develop new micro-credentials in classroom
management, phonics and explicit teaching, and to support the expansion of the Quality Teaching Rounds program; and invest $6.4 million to develop a new performance assessment framework for Initial Teacher Education courses to increase quality and drive improvement.
NCEC is the peak body for Catholic education in Australia and is responsible for the national coordination and representation of Catholic schools and school authorities.
Nationally, there are 1,755 Catholic schools educating more than 785,000 students – or one in five Australian students and employing over 102,000 staff.
