For a decade Teach For Australia has played a role in recruiting and placing high achieving graduates into Australian schools in low socioeconomic communities, many of which are located in regional, rural and remote Australia. Just-published reports point to the need to continue to recruit and place quality teachers into these schools and underpin the value of a $15 million Commonwealth funding initiative to further support Teach For Australia's work in training high achieving teachers to become school leaders.
The Grattan Institute's report, Attracting High Achievers to Teaching, makes the case for attracting more high achievers to the teaching profession, while the Dr Denis Napthine-chaired Regional Education Expert Advisory Group's National Regional, Rural and Remote Tertiary Education Strategy illustrates the value of attracting quality teachers to country schools and supporting their professional development.
Teach For Australia recruits high achieving graduates with university degrees and places them in schools as teachers (known as Associates) for two years while they earn their Masters of Teaching from the Australian Catholic University.
"The Teach For Australia model of recruiting high achievers and training them as teachers specifically caters to schools within low socioeconomic communities," Teach For Australia's founder and chief executive officer Melodie Potts Rosevear said.
"We work alongside these schools, their communities and within wider networks to help make a difference in the lives of young people who benefit enormously from having access to outstanding people standing at the front of the classroom."
Ms Potts Rosevear welcomed the Advisory Group's support of initiatives aimed at enhancing teacher quality and the equitable distribution of high performing teachers in Australia's regional, rural and remote schools. She added that the Teach For Australia model had proven itself as an important pathway for attracting the best and brightest to the classroom, pointing to the fact that since 2010 Teach For Australia has placed more than 800 high achievers in schools.
"I'd urge State and Commonwealth Governments to consider all avenues to attract high achievers into the classroom. We offer an established pipeline for attracting high achievers into the teaching profession in regional, rural and remote schools and are looking forward to the delivery of expanded leadership outcomes stemming from the recent funding announcement," she said.
Ms Potts Rosevear, whose non-profit organisation was founded in 2009 and has been funded by successive Labor and Coalition Commonwealth Governments, said she agreed with the Grattan Institute report's contention that attracting teachers to schools servicing educationally inequitable communities is difficult, particularly those in remote and regional Australia.
"Just because it's difficult to place people into some schools doesn't mean we, as a society, shouldn't endeavour to do so. After all, these are often schools where even the smallest impact goes a long way, so when you recruit and effectively train an outstanding person and place them into schools of need they have big impacts," Ms Potts Rosevear said.
"Our track record suggests that the focus on leadership development in our programs is both a critical element in unlocking inequity and in growing capacity in the rich and varied communities we operate in."
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