Suzanne Rice, Helen Watt and Paul Richardson discuss the issue of attracting quality teachers to disadvantaged schools, typically in rural, remote or poor urban areas, in this article for The Conversation.
“Quality teaching is one of the largest influences on student learning. Yet, not all students have access to a great teacher.
As in other countries, some Australian schools are harder to staff than others.
Hard-to-staff schools are usually located in remote, rural or poor urban areas. School and local facilities may not be as good in these schools as those in middle class urban schools, and students may have additional learning needs.
For these reasons, such schools are not as popular with teachers and often have high levels of staff turnover.
Students in these schools have lower average achievement than those in middle class urban schools.
Given that teachers have a huge impact on student learning, making sure students in hard-to-staff schools have quality teachers is vital.
To reduce the achievement gap, policymakers need to design staffing policies to attract and retain high-quality teachers in the schools that need them most.”
Read the full article here.
The authors explore this theme further in their book, Educating Australia: Challenges for the Decade Ahead.
