The Australian Teachers' Survey 2023: Initial Teacher Education and continuing professional development - summary report

Description

The Australian government has a history of regularly reviewing the nation’s Initial Teacher Education (ITE) programs. In common with many other countries, successive Australian governments have seen ITE reform as a way of improving the quality of teaching in schools. The most recent ITE review – the Quality Initial Teacher Education [QITE] review – was established by Alan Tudge, the Minister for Education in the Liberal-National Coalition government (2021), and continued (in the form of an ‘Expert Panel’) by the Labor government Minister for Education Jason Clare (2022).

Around the world, when policy-makers make their case for yet another ITE review- or ‘expert panel’ - and subsequent set of reforms, they often do so based, in part, on assumed dissatisfaction with ITE by the teaching profession. This rhetorical move has become commonplace including, recently, in Australia. However, as in other jurisdictions, no reliable data has existed to substantiate the claim that Australian teachers in general have been dissatisfied with their ITE programs.

In late 2022, as part of preparations for its own independent review of the future of the teaching profession in Australia, the Faculty of Education at Monash University commissioned the respected polling organisation, YouGov, to conduct a representative survey of Australian teachers. The survey was conducted online by YouGov between 1 and 13 November 2022, with 611 teachers across Australia. Age, gender, and location quotas were applied to the sample and quotas were also applied according to primary/ secondary school, and government/ Catholic/ independent school categories. Following the completion of the survey, the data was weighted by the above parameters to reflect the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics Census population estimates for teachers in Australia.

The findings of this survey present a relatively positive picture of Australian teachers’ views of their ITE. The findings demonstrate Australian teachers’ high levels of satisfaction with their ITE programs, with the highest level being among those teachers who qualified with a Master of Teaching. There are some interesting geographic and demographic differences worthy of examination, particularly the variances among graduates across various states. Whilst it is pleasing to see such a high proportion of Australian teachers feeling well prepared to teach the ongoing development of literacy and numeracy skills, it was somewhat concerning to see such a high proportion of teachers who said they felt under-prepared to teach the Australian curriculum’s priority areas.