Factors fuelling the looming teacher shortage

By Professor Barry Harper.*

Australia is facing a looming teacher shortage, with an aging workforce in schools across the nation preparing to retire in the next 5-10 years. Not surprisingly, educational authorities are concerned at the implications of this retirement en masse.

However, efforts to plug the gaps being left by retirees are being thwarted by two factors.

One is the attraction of teaching overseas, with our graduates in strong demand in English-speaking nations like Britain, the United States and Canada. The other is a desire by a significant number of teaching graduates to only teach for a short period before moving on to other careers.

While there is no definitive research into the number of Australian-trained teachers working overseas, there is plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest that their numbers are significant as these countries are also facing the problem of teacher shortages, and turning to Australian-trained staff as part of the solution (just as Australia imported large numbers of American teachers in the 1970s).

A 2004 report suggested that British school principals had headhunted 3000 Australian teachers in the previous year. There are also hundreds of Australian teachers working in New York schools, with many more scattered throughout North America.

This should not necessarily be seen as a negative. Indeed, it reflects well on the quality of graduates produced by the Australian teacher training system. Our teachers are viewed by educational authorities overseas as highly skilled, independent and with a central focus on meeting the needs of the students (rather than focusing on the curriculum as the central issue of teaching). Young graduates are also better equipped to step straight into classroom situations than their overseas-trained counterparts because of the emphasis on hands-on practical experience built into Australian teacher training.

Australian teachers who head overseas are typically attracted by the prospect of better pay and the opportunity to experience living and working overseas. However, there is strong evidence that they eventually return to live and teach in Australia.

One of the main reasons is that British teacher training does not focus on management of children and classroom performance. Therefore, the students are attuned to a system of classroom management that is anything but rigorous. This can result in major discipline problems.

Australian teachers can find this environment extremely challenging, and difficult to endure over the longer term.

Therefore, we shouldn't be worried that we have lost these teachers forever. Rather, we should recognize that working overseas is a wonderful opportunity for any young professional - broadening their horizons, their experience and their knowledge of the world. These are skills which will make them more valuable when they return to Australian schools.

Unfortunately though, Australian public school systems do not necessarily recognise this. Rather, teachers returning from overseas typically find themselves behind their colleagues who stayed at home, both in pay and in promotional opportunities

We need to develop structures that allow their overseas experience to be factored into the system, while being careful not to penalize teachers who have stayed here and worked loyally in our schools.

Of far greater concern for the long-term viability of our teaching service is the fact that a significant number of people undertaking teacher training have no intention of making it their career.

An Australian Government Department of Education, Science, Training and Youth Affairs (DEST) pilot survey of final year Education students in 2004 identified a disturbing statistic that almost 17 percent of students intended "to work as a classroom teacher before moving into a different career. While this is a pilot study which surveyed only 534 final year students across Australia and needs to be confirmed by a more comprehensive study, the findings nevertheless indicate a disturbing trend.

And they are supported by an earlier DEST study that showed up to 25 percent of teachers left the profession within five years of starting teaching.

According to a Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs study in 2002, around 32 percent of qualified teachers were working outside the profession.

We can therefore assume that training to be a teacher equips people with a broad range of management and thinking skills that give them good prospects for alternative career paths to teaching. It would also be self-evident that managing a classroom of 30 children - all with different personalities, skills, agendas and issues - and having them move in the one direction, would be excellent training for management roles in other fields.

This is perhaps good news for society in general, but not for the school system which can ill-afford to lose good teachers.

The challenge, then, is to make our schools attractive for a long-term commitment rather than as a staging-post for other careers. But that's another story ...

Professor Barry Harper is Dean of the Faculty of Education at the University of Wollongong. He began his career in education as a secondary school science teacher.