Literacy/numeracy test for South Australian student teachers from 2019 as focus tightens on class performance
In line with the eastern states, South Australia's literacy and numeracy tests from 2019 demanded that graduate teachers had skills equal to the top 30% of the population.
Hartley Building on Kintore Avenue was home to Adelaide Teachers College, Adelaide city, from 1927 to the 1970s when it became part of Adelaide College of Advanced Education city campus.
State governments turned the focus on the performance of South Australia’s 25,000 teachers with, from 2019, all students seeking teaching qualifications in South Australia having to pass a test for literacy and numeracy skills.
Bringing South Australia into line with the eastern states, the literacy and numeracy test demanded that graduate teachers had skills equal to the top 30% of the population. The test level was decided by the sate government education department and South Australia's Teachers Registration Board, with the deans of education at University of Adelaide, Flinders University, University of South Australia and Tabor College.
The previous Labor state government in 2017 proposed a teaching excellence and leadership academy to lift school and preschool performance. The academy would focus on professional development and boost support for teachers to become expert in numeracy, literacy, languages, critical and creating thinking, intercultural understanding, responding to students with learning difficulties and students who are gifted.
The need for future leaders was emphasised with 35% of school principals and preschool directors reaching retirement age over the next five years. Scholarships were offered to help more teachers get a master of teaching degree and, from 2020, to give employment preference to teachers with a master’s or double degree that includes a teaching qualification.
Also in 2017, up to 20 university students in their final year of teaching were offered $4000 to do professional experience placements in regional and rural government schools and preschools in South Australia.
Giving principals greater autonomy to fire underperforming teachers was hotly debated within the Liberal party, elected as state government in 2018, with decentralising authority from the education department bureaucracy to individual schools being a long-time staple of its policy platform.
After strikes that shut down hundreds of schools, South Australia's 25,000 public school teachers in 2020 voted 78% in favour of a pay rise of 2.35% for teachers and 3.35% for principals and preschool directors. Extra incentives were offered by the state government for teachers to work in country schools, with reduced face-to-face time in small schools and $15 million more to help schools cope with the increasing children with special needs.
South Australian teachers could receive national certification as a highly acccomplished or lead teacher, judged by a committee set up in 2013. These teachers have to progress through three stages including being observed by two nationally trained assessors. The contribution to schools by these certified leaders extended to the professional mentoring of colleagues and the broader school community.
