The Australian Government considers that every Australian student should have access to high quality teaching and the quality of Australia’s education system is dependent on the quality of its teaching workforce. If the school isn’t good enough for your child then it isn’t good enough for anyone else’s children. There are significant teacher workforce challenges, such as addressing teacher shortages and rewarding high quality teachers, that require innovative and creative responses from the Australian Government, states and territories.
In particular, the Australian Government is committed to developing effective workforce planning and supporting structures to identify teaching performance and to reward quality teaching at the national level through the $550 million Smarter Schools – Improving Teacher Quality National Partnership (TQNP) agreement.
This page provides access to national teacher workforce research and data collection, wholly or partly funded by the Australian Government, which are intended to inform and help develop initiatives in these areas. They are relevant to teachers and school principals, education authorities, other key education stakeholders, and parents and students.
Rewarding Quality Teaching
The report Rewarding Quality Teaching, undertaken by Gerard Daniels Australia (GDA), investigates best practice approaches to rewarding teaching excellence with the purpose of developing remuneration models that could work in the Australian setting. It provides:
- a stock take of current domestic and international research and practices relating to identifying and assessing teaching effectiveness, and rewarding teachers;
- development of guidance for jurisdictions for approaches to rewarding quality teaching;
- an update of information on national and international policies and initiatives; and
- further consultation with stakeholders who did not previously participate, and case studies of reward models.
It involved extensive consultations with key stakeholders, including government and non-government education authorities, unions, professional associations, business groups and other education groups.
The final Report was endorsed by MCEETYA, now the Ministerial Council for Education, Early Childhood Development and Youth Affairs (MCEECDYA).
The Rewarding Quality Teaching report can be accessed on the Ministerial Council for Education, Early Childhood Development and Youth Affairs website.
Teacher Workforce data
Staff in Australia’s Schools 2006-07
The Staff in Australia’s Schools (SIAS) project, undertaken by the Australian Council for Educational Research in collaboration with the Australia College of Educators, gathered information from over 13,000 secondary and primary school teachers and leaders across the country in 2006-07. It aimed to address key gaps in the data available to characterise the teaching profession to support workforce planning. The project's findings and recommendations are presented in two components:
OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey 2007-08
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS), conducted over 2007-08, is the first international survey to focus on the learning environment and the working conditions of teachers in schools and aims to fill important information gaps in the international comparisons of education systems. The survey involved over 70,000 lower secondary teachers (years 7-10) and principals from 24 participating countries, and it included Australia.
TALIS was undertaken in Australia by the Australian Council for Educational Research between October and December 2007. It focussed on aspects of the learning environment which influence the quality of teaching and learning in schools. This included the three key areas of: recognising, rewarding and evaluating teachers; developing effective teaching practices, attitudes and beliefs; and school leadership. A secondary theme was teacher professional development.
A direct link to a PDF copy of the TALIS International Report can be found on the OECD website.
A link to the Report's Executive Summary is on the OECD site.