In general, the return on a pre-service investment depends on whether teacher management in a country is effective. This is because of the time between entry to the profession and entry to the classroom. Many intervening steps need to be regulated and monitored so new teachers can meet children’s needs. ODE’s Supporting Teacher Development: Literature Review indicates that most policy development for improving teacher quality occurs at the pre-service stage of teacher development.26
The sections that follow describe DFAT investments in relation to relevant SABER teacher policy domains (Table 4, Chapter 1) for effective pre-service policy.
Recruitment: attracting the best into teaching
Effective teacher recruitment secures quality candidates while ensuring an affordable, representative and sustainable supply of teachers to meet national and local demand. This policy domain is distinctive to pre-service. Research has shown that quality of recruits is associated with better student achievements.27
However, there is no universal standard for ‘best’ that can realistically be applied in all countries. Finland’s ‘gold standard’ of initial Masters level preparation is often cited as exemplary.28 Pragmatically, the standard needs to be a trade-off between quality and what a country can support to create an academically eligible pool and, in the context of market forces, an affordable teaching force.
In some countries, large minority and/or disadvantaged populations are under-represented in higher levels of education. Women in conservative provinces of Afghanistan and Pakistan and girls in remote areas of Laos are unlikely to have superior academic backgrounds and qualifications.29 ‘Best’ in these circumstances is a deliberate compromise. It includes candidate teachers from specific populations. A strategic reason for this, in Australia’s experience, is that teachers with connections to their community perform better and stay longer.30
Recruiting from such populations may require dropping the level of academic eligibility to obtain candidates. However, the standard should not drop below the level required for teachers to master subject content, because their grasp of subject matter is one of the most influential variables on student learning.31
Qualifications: preparing teachers with useful training and experience
Where academic background requirements are lowered, additional support through and after pre-service training is necessary. The Laos – Australia Basic Education Program (LABEP) recruited ethnic teachers to serve remote communities disadvantaged in respect of Lao as the language of instruction. The BEQUAL program in Laos will take up that strategy again, but build on lessons from LABEP: particularly the importance of ongoing support for new teachers. This will involve skilling local supervisors (pedagogical advisors) and negotiating with central and provincial governments for recurrent funding for their mentoring in schools.
Teaching courses, with their lower entry requirements, are often a way for enrolees who do not intend to teach to get a tertiary qualification.32 This can lead to over enrolment, which can drain resources that should be invested in those who intend to teach. Teacher projection undertaken by ministries plays an important role in specifying quotas and class sizes for TEIs.33 Quotas must be enforced, as TEIs can have counter-incentives to increase their revenue through private fee-paying enrolment. Laos exemplifies the struggle to get some TEIs to conform to regulation.
In small education systems, initial selection can be made jointly by the user (the ministry) and the service provider—a recommendation of Samoa’s NTDF.34 That has the additional advantage of setting up joint ownership of and accountability for the quality of the trainee teacher. Research indicates that joint selection is practiced in high-performing systems.35 Standards: setting clear expectations for teachers
Many countries have developed teacher standards (content and pedagogy), and this has been a successful area of investment for Australian aid to education in the Philippines through BEST. In the Philippines, the system for professional standards guides teachers more thoroughly because it aligns with the government’s basic education reforms. Teacher standards are specified for each teaching domain. They address the teaching challenges and competency expectations of a kindergarten to Year 12 teacher. For example, new language of instruction
Investing in Teachers | 27
Recruitment: attracting the best into teaching
Effective teacher recruitment secures quality candidates while ensuring an affordable, representative and sustainable supply of teachers to meet national and local demand. This policy domain is distinctive to pre-service. Research has shown that quality of recruits is associated with better student achievements.27
However, there is no universal standard for ‘best’ that can realistically be applied in all countries. Finland’s ‘gold standard’ of initial Masters level preparation is often cited as exemplary.28 Pragmatically, the standard needs to be a trade-off between quality and what a country can support to create an academically eligible pool and, in the context of market forces, an affordable teaching force.
In some countries, large minority and/or disadvantaged populations are under-represented in higher levels of education. Women in conservative provinces of Afghanistan and Pakistan and girls in remote areas of Laos are unlikely to have superior academic backgrounds and qualifications.29 ‘Best’ in these circumstances is a deliberate compromise. It includes candidate teachers from specific populations. A strategic reason for this, in Australia’s experience, is that teachers with connections to their community perform better and stay longer.30
Recruiting from such populations may require dropping the level of academic eligibility to obtain candidates. However, the standard should not drop below the level required for teachers to master subject content, because their grasp of subject matter is one of the most influential variables on student learning.31
Qualifications: preparing teachers with useful training and experience
Where academic background requirements are lowered, additional support through and after pre-service training is necessary. The Laos – Australia Basic Education Program (LABEP) recruited ethnic teachers to serve remote communities disadvantaged in respect of Lao as the language of instruction. The BEQUAL program in Laos will take up that strategy again, but build on lessons from LABEP: particularly the importance of ongoing support for new teachers. This will involve skilling local supervisors (pedagogical advisors) and negotiating with central and provincial governments for recurrent funding for their mentoring in schools.
Teaching courses, with their lower entry requirements, are often a way for enrolees who do not intend to teach to get a tertiary qualification.32 This can lead to over enrolment, which can drain resources that should be invested in those who intend to teach. Teacher projection undertaken by ministries plays an important role in specifying quotas and class sizes for TEIs.33 Quotas must be enforced, as TEIs can have counter-incentives to increase their revenue through private fee-paying enrolment. Laos exemplifies the struggle to get some TEIs to conform to regulation.
In small education systems, initial selection can be made jointly by the user (the ministry) and the service provider—a recommendation of Samoa’s NTDF.34 That has the additional advantage of setting up joint ownership of and accountability for the quality of the trainee teacher. Research indicates that joint selection is practiced in high-performing systems.35 Standards: setting clear expectations for teachers
Many countries have developed teacher standards (content and pedagogy), and this has been a successful area of investment for Australian aid to education in the Philippines through BEST. In the Philippines, the system for professional standards guides teachers more thoroughly because it aligns with the government’s basic education reforms. Teacher standards are specified for each teaching domain. They address the teaching challenges and competency expectations of a kindergarten to Year 12 teacher. For example, new language of instruction
Teacher at the school library, Vanuatu, 2011. Photo: DFAT.
policy requires primary teachers to be competent in the language of instruction, and junior high school teachers need to be competent in various areas of science teaching rather than in just one science discipline.
The value-add of BEST is that the pre-service curriculum is adjusted to new expectations, and supports a career progression that applies to both pre-service and in-service teachers. Through BEST, curriculum development is informed by research into what graduating students need in terms of content knowledge and pedagogical skills for different teaching domains through kindergarten to Year 12.
Deployment: matching teachers’ skills with students’ needs
Strong teacher supply and deployment policies have to be in place and working if an investment in pre-service qualification is to have an education quality return. Distortions in teacher deployment can result in untrained contract or volunteer teachers being used instead of graduates. Strong deployment policies include incentives or other levers to supply qualified teachers in hard-to-staff locations and enforcing limits on the numbers trained to avoid training in excess of workforce needs.