Michael Ferguson (Bass, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the report of the House Standing Committee on Education and Vocational Training inquiry into teacher education, Top of the class, which has today been tabled in the House of Representatives. I have found it a very fulfilling and satisfying experience to be a member of this committee and, in particular, to be involved in this inquiry. We on the committee have worked in a fashion which I think the parliament and the people of Australia can be very proud of. I have observed very good working relationships between the committee chair, the member for Cowper, and the deputy chair, the member for Port Adelaide, and among the members of the committee. The subject matter of the inquiry was not easy, but we approached it in a spirit of genuinely wanting to see improved outcomes for people who study at university to become teachers.

The inquiry was a very interesting experience. We approached it with trepidation because it is just the latest in a very long list of antecedent inquiries over my lifetime. I would like to think that this will be the last such inquiry. It would be nice to think that, with all of the work that has been produced over the last few decades in this area, we are actually in a position today to take a holistic approach to those, to take the good from all of them and to actually implement them. I know that one of the great frustrations for people in this sector around Australia has been the fact that many reports and inquiries on this subject in the past have been ignored. While I think there will be more inquiries in the future, I hope that this report is taken note of and adopted by the government, and I see no reason why the opposition would not be minded to do the same.

In that spirit, I offer a little anecdote from back in the days when I was a schoolteacher. In my last year of teaching, one of my more memorable students, a young lady by the name of Rebecca, quite indignantly complained to me that a person who wanted to study to be a veterinarian had to study for some six years and they only have to look after animals, yet a person who wanted to train to look after children—that is, to become a teacher—had to train for only four years. She was quite indignant about this situation, the implication of course being that it should have been the other way around because children are more important than animals. The comparison is not a fair one, and after all she was only joking, but it does highlight that there is a very important link between the quality of a teacher’s preparation as an undergraduate and their quality as a teacher in the classroom.

The report today is, I think, the result of a committee inquiry which approached this subject by really looking to again speak with and hear from universities, parents, teachers, schools and other peak bodies. Today I strongly believe that we have an opportunity to look at these reforms, stare them in the eye and actually take this opportunity—and I heard one of the previous speakers describing this as an opportunity.

There are 12 far-reaching reform measures which are being recommended, including the need for a truly national system of accrediting university courses; making practicum more effective and building genuine partnerships which can actually empower practicum to be a very useful experience for student teachers; the need for a reliable research base to inform this policy area in teacher education into the future; at last, sanction for a genuine induction for graduate entrants to the profession; career-long learning and development; and, of course, the funding issues which come with any reform initiative.

I know that our report does explicitly state that the committee has been very impressed by the dedication and professionalism of both the profession itself and those who are preparing future teachers. In attempting, though, to fulfil our mandate of honestly looking this sector in the eye and being able to assess the quality of teacher education in Australia, we certainly did find that the quality varies widely between providers and depending on exactly what institution and what stream a student is in. This makes sense given that faculties as entities within universities operate in an academic environment which allows for freedom to be innovative, creative and clever, and maybe even do some risk-taking about the approaches that they adopt in preparing teachers. But equally it has to be said that universities and faculties are free as well to be very dull, uninnovative, uninspiring and traditional—if you like, resting on the methods of the past because, after all, that is what you are familiar with.

At a political level over the last few years there certainly have been concerns expressed by different parties or different people about the quality of our future teachers. That does point, as always, to the quality of the experience that they are being exposed to at university. This needs to be tested. As was indicated earlier today, the committee, in accepting that there might be some evidence for this, was not in a position to make a broad-brush judgement because, unfortunately, as strange as it may sound, the research base is simply not there on a basis that you could rely upon with any certainty.

In that regard, I think we will find that there will be people, particularly in the media, who will be perhaps disappointed that the document is not more political, and that it does not give a hard time to academics for being too left, quasi-psychological, uninspiring or unimaginative, or not producing teachers capable of teaching in a classroom and managing that very difficult environment. But, equally, there is no bill of clean health here either. We have a lot of work to do in this country in establishing a research base which we can rely upon when those people who replace us in this parliament are again confronted with issues to do with teacher education. I hope that the Australian government at this opportunity takes up our recommendation of establishing that very important longitudinal study along with, of course, the educational research fund—call it what you will—to put education in this country in an informed position. Unfortunately, that is not where we are at today.

Teacher training in Australia is certainly not in crisis. It is with a good deal of heart that I say that. But we certainly can do better. I do believe that our community is ready for further education reform and that we need to see that beginning in our universities. On the evidence that is available here, it cannot generally be said that teacher training produces graduates without the necessary suite of knowledge, skills and strategies to teach effectively, but it is happening in some quarters and we will need to be courageous enough to meet our obligations and to challenge it.

The country is also confronted by the fact that we do not have at this time a set of professional standards for either teacher registration or teacher education that is nationally consistent. That is a very important initiative. I think it is one of the centrepiece recommendations from the committee’s report. I think that will need to be handled in a very delicate fashion with our state and territory colleagues, because we will all have to own this if it is to be successful in the future.

Adopting this recommendation has a risk in that if it is not handled carefully and with a genuine spirit of goodwill with state and territory colleagues we run the risk of bringing those professional standards in a nationally consistent way down to a lowest common denominator. We must be very careful that that not be allowed to take place and that we in fact strive to lift standards, which can only result in better learning outcomes for our kids. I think Rebecca would be impressed with our report. I think she would see that we are actually attempting to harness the information we have to hand in a way that reforms education, makes it stronger and makes it better for people in her situation in the future who are challenged with questions of the difference between four and six. I thank the House.

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