Education and training workforce: Schools workforce
Research report
Released 04 / 05 / 2012
The third phase of the Education and Training Workforce study examined the workforce of the schools sector.
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- Key points
- Contents
- Australia's future depends on how well it develops the 'human capital' of its population. A well performing schooling system is fundamental.
- Australian schools generally deliver good student outcomes at reasonable cost, but improvements are required.
- Student literacy and numeracy have declined in recent years, and Australia has fallen behind other high-performing countries, despite increased spending per student and falling class sizes.
- Australia does not perform as well as other countries in offsetting educational disadvantage, especially for Indigenous students.
- More effective teachers and other school workers would achieve better student outcomes, and a more efficient schools workforce would achieve a greater improvement from any given level of resources.
- An extensive range of workforce-related reforms are already in place or prospect, but it is too early to fully judge their impacts.
- This study has focused on identifying cost-effective measures that would build on the existing reform program, address some problematic initiatives, and deal with matters that have received insufficient attention.
- The Commission's proposed package of reforms gives priority to:
- raising teacher quality - by improving: teacher training, induction and mentoring; teacher appraisal; the management of unsatisfactory performance; and the link between teacher performance and career progression
- reducing teacher shortages - through greater use of pay differentials for hard-to-staff positions, and more flexible entry requirements for teacher training
- ameliorating educational disadvantage - through targeted initiatives based on evidence, alongside the broader reforms recommended in this study
- strengthening the use of evaluation and research in policy making - by governments individually reviewing and reforming their approaches, and jointly initiating policy evaluations on educational disadvantage and teacher shortages.
- Many of the recommended reforms would raise the attractiveness of teaching as a profession, and so help to turn around the widely held perception that the status of teachers has declined.
- The Commission has also made a range of policy-related findings, including on the:
- importance of school leadership and autonomy in driving workforce innovation
- benefits of greater flexibility in the industrial relations regime for school workers.
- Preliminaries
- Cover, Copyright, Foreword, Terms of reference, Contents, and Abbreviations and explanations
- Overview - including key points
- Recommendations and Findings
- Chapter 1 About the study
- 1.1 Why look at schools workforce issues?
- 1.2 Workforce coverage
- 1.3 School funding
- 1.4 Consultation process for the study
- 1.5 Road map for the rest of the report
- Chapter 2 Profile of the schools workforce
- 2.1 Schooling in Australia
- 2.2 The current schools workforce
- 2.3 Workforce issues and challenges
- Chapter 3 Policy considerations
- 3.1 Objectives of the schooling system
- 3.2 Current schools workforce reforms
- 3.3 The Commission's assessment framework
- Chapter 4 Addressing imbalances in teacher supply and demand
- 4.1 Current and expected imbalances
- 4.2 Costs of imbalances
- 4.3 Measures to address surpluses
- 4.4 Ameliorating shortages
- Chapter 5 Training and professional development
- 5.1 Pre-service teacher education
- 5.2 Practicum and induction
- 5.3 Screening for teacher quality
- 5.4 Professional development
- 5.5 A longitudinal dataset
- Chapter 6 Teacher performance
- 6.1 Current approaches to performance appraisal
- 6.2 Enhancing performance appraisal
- 6.3 Managing unsatisfactory performance
- 6.4 Performance based remuneration
- Chapter 7 Workforce composition and innovation
- 7.1 Recent changes in workforce composition and deployment
- 7.2 Future directions for workforce innovation
- 7.3 Removing barriers to workforce innovation
- Chapter 8 Leadership and school autonomy
- 8.1 The roles, skills and knowledge of school leaders
- 8.2 Underpinning leadership quality
- 8.3 School autonomy
- Chapter 9 Reducing educational disadvantage
- 9.1 Aiming for equality of educational opportunity
- 9.2 Challenges in reducing educational disadvantage
- 9.3 Recent policy responses
- 9.4 What could be done differently to reduce educational disadvantage?
- 9.5 Gathering evidence on 'what works' and using it
- Chapter 10 Policy evaluation and research
- 10.1 The role of research and policy evaluation
- 10.2 Education-related research and data
- 10.3 Education-related policy evaluation
- 10.4 Strengthening research and evaluation capacity
- Chapter 11 Some broader framework issues
- 11.1 Policy coordination and stakeholder representation
- 11.2 Parental and community engagement
- 11.3 Industrial relations
- Appendix A Public consultation
- References