AITSL has commenced a national review of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers and is seeking feedback from teachers across Australia.
The IEU is participating in the review and has put in an IEU Expert Submission on the Review of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers.
We encourage members to complete the national survey. Please consider the IEUA submission if you are responding to the AITSL survey on possible changes to the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers.
Survey closes this Friday, 7 August.
Key points in the IEUA submission are:
- the Standards are deeply embedded in the achievement of educational outcomes, industrial agreements and accreditation/registration requirements. Alterations to the meaning, intention or implementation that would affect these components must be rejected.
- there should be a unified set of Standards that apply to teachers working across schools and Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC). This could be achieved without increasing the number of Standards or Descriptors through minor changes in language or terminology to make the Standards more inclusive of ECEC teachers.
- separate Standards for ECEC teachers are strongly opposed by the IEU because they are likely to perpetuate issues of parity between the sectors, require ECEC teachers who also work in schools to adhere to two sets of Standards, and impact the accreditation process. An accreditation supervisor would need to achieve Proficient under the new Standards before they could verify anyone else’s accreditation status. The delays alone would be prohibitive.
- Standards or Descriptors must not include personal or relational qualities such as patience or resilience. There is no way to assess such personal qualities fairly or consistently.
- student wellbeing is already included in the Standards at 4.4. Including staff wellbeing is impractical, as presumably staff would have to objectively verify their own wellbeing or that of their colleagues.
A key issue is ensuring that all teachers remain covered by a single set of Australian Professional Standards.
It is the view of the IEU that separate standards for early childhood teachers risk:
- Creating, and in some cases reinforcing, an artificial distinction within the profession
- diminishing the professional status and recognition of qualified early childhood teachers, and
- undermining parity in accreditation, career progression and employment conditions.
The IEU also believes the Standards should remain practical, evidence-based and capable of being applied consistently across the profession.
Members are encouraged to reflect on these issues, and on their own experiences of using the Standards, when completing the survey.
The survey closes Friday 7 August.
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