The New South Wales Government has announced a comprehensive suite of reforms it claims will deliver significant improvement to the State’s education system.

Premier Barry O’Farrell said that the Great Teaching, Inspire Learning is one of the most comprehensive reforms to improve teaching quality ever undertaken in Australia, and follows extensive consultation with parents, teachers, universities and education experts.

“All the evidence tells us the quality of teaching is the single-most important influence on student performance,” Mr O’Farrell said.

“We already have a world class teaching profession here in NSW but our performance against international standards tells us we can improve.”

The suite of reforms will include:

  • Raise the academic standards required to enter teaching degrees;
  • Introduce a mandatory literacy and numeracy assessment that pre-service teachers must pass before acceptance into their final year teaching rounds;
  • Undertake annual reviews of universities and publish the results;
  • Make sure all new teachers have induction programs including additional support during the first year;
  • Manage the performance of teachers in a more rigorous and effective way so that every teacher meets the national teaching standards and their own schoolbased performance plans;
  • Make the processes to remove underperforming teachers more straightforward;
  • Link teacher career pathways to the attainment of the national professional teaching standards; and Prepare our principals better through having rigorous formal professional learning that must be completed before they are appointed.

 

Further information is available at http://www.schools.nsw.edu.au/greatteaching/