teacher management.
36Inefficiency in teacher deployment can be greatly exacerbated by pre-service systems that graduate secondary school teachers with only one teaching major. Junior secondary and secondary schools are often required to have one teacher per subject. Teachers can therefore be under-loaded. For example, senior secondary teachers in Vanuatu teach only one subject.37 This is also the practice in Indonesia and Laos. Changing pre-service requirements for teaching would pave the way for solving this issue.
Retention and attrition
With teacher retirement, illness and death, an education system can expect an attrition* rate of between 3 and 4 per cent per year.38 The literature on teacher retention and attrition is limited to developed countries and Africa. Limited evidence from Ghana, South Africa and other countries suggests that attrition rates are greatest among teachers with higher academic qualifications (especially mathematics and science). High rates of attrition exist in schools in rural areas and other ‘least desired’ teaching locations.39 This impacts disproportionately on teaching maths and science and on the most disadvantaged schools. It also results in teacher supply gaps and increased use of unqualified or inexperienced teachers in these areas. Policy recommendations to reduce attrition and improve retention include better:
> deployment policies > local recruitment
> pay and working conditions (low remuneration, difficulty accessing pay in rural locations, excessive workloads and problems with classroom behaviour were among factors contributing to early teacher attrition in South Africa)40
> school-level management, including professional support and incentives for effective teacher performance.41
Features of quality pre-service teacher development practice†
The quality of training to prepare teachers to be competent professionals is what concerns most of DFAT’s pre-service programs. As with teachers, the quality of a pre-service institution is most systematically addressed by national standard setting and accreditation.
In the Philippines, standards for pre-service institutions cover: > staff qualifications and competencies
> course quality, including practicum and partnership arrangements with schools > teaching and study loads
> equipment resources and resourcing.
Quality assurance measures are an important policy lesson emphasised in ODE’s Supporting Teacher Development: Literature Review.42 The most rigorous form is accreditation of teacher education programs. This is when an external agency endorses that graduates are competent to enter the profession. A successful strategy for accreditation is exemplified in support
through ICFP in Timor-Leste. The college is now affiliated with the Australian Catholic University, which means its qualifications meet the standards of the university.
The quality of curriculum is of highest relevance to quality of pre-service provision.43 An international hallmark is a full integration of pre-service preparation with the school curriculum and classroom-relevant teaching practice.44 In development contexts the most favoured strategy for ensuring relevance of training is expanding school experience—mentored class observations, practicums and internships. Australia’s new investments in pre-service provision (BEQUAL, Laos; VESP, Vanuatu) feature a strong curriculum emphasis on the practicum. But the funding implications of this benchmark need to be recognised. Teachers’ colleges and
institutes are chronically under-funded. They may therefore be reduced to providing marginal and ineffectual practicums because the costs—of partnerships with schools, lecturer visits and supervising teachers who actually supervise—are prohibitive. Curriculum transformation cannot take place without a commensurate investment in its value.
The development community’s emphasis on improving learning outcomes is resulting in more recognition of the role that pre-service institutions can uniquely play in supporting learning. Subject expertise, technical understanding of learning, and assessment of the pedagogy for literacy and numeracy are—or can be—housed in pre-service institutions more adequately than elsewhere. Two important Australian aid contributions to quality pre-service and in-service teacher development deserve a brief mention. Australia Awards and Australian Volunteers for International Development have been used by many countries to strengthen the teaching workforce directly and improve teacher development policies, systems and institutions. Australia Awards
While generally not coordinated with country education policies or plans, Australia Awards for study at Australian universities have been used extensively to support pre-service and in-service qualifications. Since 2009, 255 scholars from partner countries have received ‘teacher education’ qualifications through Australia Awards scholarships. As shown in Figure 2, 39 per cent of education scholars from 2009 to 2014 undertook such a qualification. Most (68 per cent) undertook a Master’s degree and 27 per cent a Bachelor’s degree. The most common field of study has been English as a Second Language Teaching.
Figure 2: Scholarships by education subsector 2009–14
Teacher education Education Unspecified Curriculum and education studies Other education
Source: DFAT, Scholarships Section, 2015
The largest cohort of teacher education scholars since 2009 (61 in total) is from Indonesia. In the Pacific, Australia Awards scholarships have provided an important alternative pathway for teacher education, with the largest numbers of scholarship awardees coming from PNG (44), Vanuatu (23), Kiribati (15), Tuvalu (10) and Samoa (10).*
* Teacher attrition means permanent loss of teachers from the teaching profession.
† This section provides an overview of DFAT’s pre-service teacher policy experience compared to the SABER teacher domain ‘Preparing teachers with useful training and experience’ and, where relevant, ODE’s Supporting Teacher Development: Literature Review.
* In commenting on the draft report, DFAT program managers in Apia advised they are trialling the use of some Australia Awards for prospective teachers from the National University (Faculty of Education, Science and Arts) to obtain qualifications in specialist areas such as science, maths and literacy.
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institutes are chronically under-funded. They may therefore be reduced to providing marginal and ineffectual practicums because the costs—of partnerships with schools, lecturer visits and supervising teachers who actually supervise—are prohibitive. Curriculum transformation cannot take place without a commensurate investment in its value.
The development community’s emphasis on improving learning outcomes is resulting in more recognition of the role that pre-service institutions can uniquely play in supporting learning. Subject expertise, technical understanding of learning, and assessment of the pedagogy for literacy and numeracy are—or can be—housed in pre-service institutions more adequately than elsewhere. Two important Australian aid contributions to quality pre-service and in-service teacher development deserve a brief mention. Australia Awards and Australian Volunteers for International Development have been used by many countries to strengthen the teaching workforce directly and improve teacher development policies, systems and institutions. Australia Awards
While generally not coordinated with country education policies or plans, Australia Awards for study at Australian universities have been used extensively to support pre-service and in-service qualifications. Since 2009, 255 scholars from partner countries have received ‘teacher education’ qualifications through Australia Awards scholarships. As shown in Figure 2, 39 per cent of education scholars from 2009 to 2014 undertook such a qualification. Most (68 per cent) undertook a Master’s degree and 27 per cent a Bachelor’s degree. The most common field of study has been English as a Second Language Teaching.
Figure 2: Scholarships by education subsector 2009–14
Teacher education Education Unspecified Curriculum and education studies Other education
Source: DFAT, Scholarships Section, 2015
The largest cohort of teacher education scholars since 2009 (61 in total) is from Indonesia. In the Pacific, Australia Awards scholarships have provided an important alternative pathway for teacher education, with the largest numbers of scholarship awardees coming from PNG (44), Vanuatu (23), Kiribati (15), Tuvalu (10) and Samoa (10).*
* Teacher attrition means permanent loss of teachers from the teaching profession.
† This section provides an overview of DFAT’s pre-service teacher policy experience compared to the SABER teacher domain ‘Preparing teachers with useful training and experience’ and, where relevant, ODE’s Supporting Teacher Development: Literature Review.
* In commenting on the draft report, DFAT program managers in Apia advised they are trialling the use of some Australia Awards for prospective teachers from the National University (Faculty of Education, Science and Arts) to obtain qualifications in specialist areas such as science, maths and literacy.
Australian Volunteers in education and teacher training
From 2011–12 to 2014–15, a total of 878 volunteers worked in the education sector (13 per cent of all volunteers):
> 463 (53 per cent) of education sector volunteers were hosted by educational institutions > 132 were teacher training volunteers.
The Solomon Islands and Indonesia received the greatest number of teacher training volunteers from 2011–12 to 2014–15 (28 and 26 respectively), followed by Kiribati (9). Recognition is growing of the role pre-service institutions should play in professional development as well as initial training. Programs in Laos and Vanuatu are two examples of this. Greater integration of pre-service and in-service delivery presents challenges but also opportunities to maximise practice in the pre-service course and develop a network of supportive partnerships between lecturers and teachers.
Australian volunteer Ben Clare, himself blind, volunteering in Samoa to train teachers and students to read braille. 2010. Photo: Ben Clare, DFAT.
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