Schools Workforce

• 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.

Background information

Greg Murtough (Acting Assistant Commissioner) 03 9653 2163