Reduced Literacy and Numeracy of Australia's Teachers and the Governmental Quick Non-Fix. (August 28, 2008)

    It was a leading news story in all sections of the media this morning:

Teachers are less literate, numerate

Teacher literacy falls with salaries

Teachers are not so clever any more

Federal push for teacher performance pay rejected

Union urges investment in teachers

Teachers need performance pay

Low pay blamed for reported drop in teacher quality

Teachers' failure to make the grade

Teaching standards tumble

And so it went.

The headlines and short reports were in response to the publication yesterday (Sunday) of a study by the Australian National University highlighting the trend that academic standards of new teachers have fallen significantly over the past 20 years.

The federally funded study was undertaken by the Australian Council for Education Research from tracking more than 350 students whose literacy and numeracy abilities were assessed from age 14 through their mid 20s.

The study found that students entering teaching degrees in 1983 were in the top 26% of their class, but by 2003 they ranked in the top 39%.

The Federal Minister for Education, Science and Training, Julie Bishop said the report highlighted the need for performance incentives to boost the quality and standard of the teaching profession while Labor made the point the results indicated an urgent need for minimum standards to be introduced for teaching qualifications.

Yet one of the matters emphasised in the report is that compared to non-teachers with a degree, average teacher pay fell by more than 10% over the period 1983 to 2003.

And significantly, while Ms Bishop focused on a reward scheme for good teachers, one of the main points of the study was that the problem was rooted in the diminution of the quality of individuals becoming trainee teachers. The average teacher trainee in 1983 was more literate and numerate than 74% of age peers. By 2003, that had decreased to 61% - and the decline was similar for new teachers.

In fact what we see is the government Coalition looking to the cheap quick fix. What might be called the prize mentality. In it's ultimate form it suggests that it's Nobel Prizes that entice the best minds to become biomedical scientists, chemists and physicists.

The suggestion that significantly improving the pay, working conditions as well as the quality of those responsible for training the teachers ought to be addressed seems to have dropped through the cracks. Of course that would require a concerted and well resourced effort.

Odd how neither the governing Coalition nor Labor Opposition addressed these points?

Not really.

Not until our parliamentarians come to believe that their re-election and superannuation benefits may be dependent on REALLY fixing the situation will the problem of declining standards be appropriately addressed.

Only last Thursday the state of mathematics and science teaching was commented on by the president of the Australian Academy of Science, Kurt Lambeck.

"We have a generation of teachers that themselves have not been adequately taught [in these subjects]," Professor Lambeck said, and told The Australian's Selina Mitchell that the result was students... who could not recognise when computer-generated solutions were wrong. "My students can operate programs on a computer but they have stopped thinking and can't make judgments. "We will only be solving problems for which we already have the solutions."