How we can improve the teachers in our schools

Mention university entrance scores (ATARs) and teachers in the same sentence and you better strap yourself in, because it’s about to get more heated than the time you asked your maths teacher “when am I ever going to need algebra in real life?”

This debate has been renewed by the sobering news that Australia has continued to fall down international education rankings in Maths and Science. Meanwhile the Victorian Government has committed to implementing tougher standards for aspiring teachers — part of which is raising the ATAR to 65 in 2018 and 70 in 2019.

Every time changing the entry standards for teaching are discussed, a predictable debate quickly follows. On one side, many applaud the decision as an obvious step towards improving so-called “teacher quality” while others deride it as beside the point and a poor way to measure the worth of teachers.

So which is it?

The importance of intelligence to the teacher equation

By wanting to raise the ATAR, the Government is suggesting that people are more likely to be better teachers if they have a higher ATAR. Essentially, they’re saying that intelligence or high academic performance is a critical ingredient for effective teaching.

But is that right?

For a recent story, I set out to investigate this very question of what makes a great teacher. I sat down with hyperactive year 3s, solemn year 12s on the brink of their exams, my own favourite teachers and academics to try and figure out exactly what we’re supposed to be looking for when it comes to great teaching. Because what’s the point of trying to test aspiring teachers if we don’t even know what we’re supposed to be looking for?

To use a stale analogy, if great teachers were a cake, then what are the ingredients?

Turns out it’s not all that simple — everyone I spoke to had a different answer. But intelligence was rarely the top of the list.

When I spoke with year three students, they were more preoccupied with whether their teachers were nice or fun or let them play games (okay, hardly surprising). Year 12s valued engaging teachers who respected them and above all, helped them get the marks they needed for university.

On the other hand, teachers often stressed the importance of the actual methods they used in the classroom to tackle the differences in ability within classrooms including group work or differentiation.

Intelligence was rarely brought up independently, but when I prompted them, nearly everyone said that teachers knowing their stuff was important — after all, you can’t hope to teach students if you don’t have a grasp of the content yourself.

Perhaps Grattan Institute academic Peter Goss summed it up best when he said “well that’s the million dollar question”.

And he’s right. There’s no exact formula for determining what makes a great teacher.

Teachers not only need to be intelligent, they need to be compassionate, resilient, motivated and be able to gain the respect of the students and control the class. And it’s not just the personalities of the teachers either — it’s about the skills and methods they use in the classroom.

Plus, it’s subjective. The same teacher could be inspirational to one student and hopeless to another.

So why the emphasis on the ATAR?

If intelligence isn’t only one factor that determines how effective a teacher will be, then why all the emphasis on raising the ATAR?

The main reason is because it’s easy to measure. Look at it this way, we know that being compassionate and engaging and intelligent are all important attributes for great teachers and we’d like to ensure that every aspiring teacher will have these qualities.

But the reality is, there’s no test for how engaging an aspiring teacher will be in a classroom or a numerical number for how compassionate a person is.

However, it is relatively easy to determine whether they are intelligent or not from their results in the ATAR. It’s not perfect and it’s not foolproof. Many intelligent people may have underperformed in high school, just as many people who received ATARs above 90 may be wholly unsuited to teaching. But more often than not, the ATAR is a good indicator of academic capability.

What didn’t get a lot of attention in the reports over the raise in the ATAR in Victoria was the implementation of other means testing. In addition to raising the ATAR, applicants will also have to sit a test which will measure skills like empathy, resilience, problem solving and leadership.

Clearly, it cannot be as rigorous as the ATAR system which is aggregated over a year of study. But it does attempt to control these factors. A smart teacher with zero ability to connect with kids isn’t going to make a good teacher, even if they did get a 99.95.

Providing Support

But no matter how smart or creative or high performing teachers are, above all they need support — something that is seriously lacking in many schools. A teacher I spoke to would finish class at 3.30pm before driving straight to the National Library and studying for a further 4 hours to prepare for the next day. Add on the ridiculous amount of paperwork, school reports, piles of essays to mark and rob them of a whole lunch hour to supervise the playground and burnout seems almost inevitable.

We can’t expect teachers to be able to be effective or inspirational under such difficult circumstances. We can’t expect them to craft engaging lesson plans when they’re overwhelmed with marking.

And while there are important ingredients which help inform us of what we should look for in a great teacher, we must remember that before all else, they’re people and should be treated as such — not a formulaic robot.

Raising the ATAR is a good starting point. No profession is going to suffer from raising the standards of entry. But as we do so, we need to support the teachers already in the system. Even if we raised the ATAR to 99.95 tomorrow, these high achieving teachers would still only make up a minority of the profession for decades to come.

And perhaps if we raised the ATAR, we could start treating teachers with the same respect we reserve for doctors and lawyers.

Or you know, we could just go ahead and do that anyway.

This article by Cameron Nicholls was originally published at The Vocal.