High Quality Teachers Needed: Report

by AAP, 21st Century News: http://www.21stcenturynews.com.au/high-quality-teachers-needed-report/?inf_contact_key=3d4120d6ea7679d62ca7442fdcde8772b9ec71b69bea840a7a959b8f37fa8535

Give a school quality teachers and generations of children will flourish.

That’s the message of a report by the Public Policy Institute (PPI) of the Australian Catholic University, on improving education.

Co-author of the Beyond Gonski report, Dr Scott Prasser, says the debate should be about the quality and distribution of resources, not the quantity of money spent.

The report, released on Tuesday, recommends training high quality teachers and treating teaching as a critical profession.

“We undervalue our teachers, in other countries teachers are highly valued as very important players,” Dr Prasser told ABC radio. “It’s one of the most important things you can do.”

Dr Prasser said a lot of funding had been used in the wrong way, like reducing class sizes, which worked for some groups but not the whole school community. He also said NAPLAN was a good one-level basic test, but national policy needed to be much broader.

The Gonski review was still a big-spending approach that wasn’t focused on quality, Dr Prasser said. He advocates giving schools more independence to direct resources and funding to suit their own individual needs.

Teaching basic skills along with more modern skills like critical analysis and teamwork, and an emphasis on teaching liberal arts are also seen as important.

Entrepreneur and CEO of 21st Century Education, Jamie McIntyre says improving teacher training is critical. However, he says, until the old outdated 19th century education system is dropped and replaced with a modern day 21st century education, it will have limited impact.