The State Government’s new pilot program to address teacher shortages in rural and regional areas could not come any sooner for Mitchell Shire, where there is just one secondary school for the growing demographic in its southern areas.
In the 2021 Census, just 3.3 per cent of all workers captured by the survey were listed as school teachers, and in a 2024 Australian Bureau of Statistics report, the average student to teaching ratio was 13.1 students to one teacher.
A student nearing the final months of their senior years in a nearby State Government high school said their classroom was more often than not under resourced with teachers and laptops.
They said there were many occasions when they arrived at school and were told they would have a Classroom Replacement Teacher (CRT) or an independent study session.
“It was challenging because it’s hard to get a grip of a teacher when they keep switching out. We know it’s not just our school, not just our class, but it’s really frustrating to hear we might fail or we’re not keeping up,” they said.
There are over 15 students in the class, and when the school was unable to source a CRT, they were instructed to attend class and work independently. The school had concerns about allocating laptops to students without having a teacher in the class to take responsibility for them, and so instead printed out a student workbook for them to work on independently.
“If they could meet us halfway and at least say ‘Oh ok, we’ll split you up then, and give you a teacher to help you out when you have a question’, cause even if the work’s online, you’re still going to have a question about something,” the student said.
“When our teachers did come back from their leave or whatever they had going on, they just were like ‘You are turning 18 this year, this is your responsibility, you guys are old enough to be able to do this yourself.’”
Minister for Education Ben Carroll said that he hoped the new pilot program would attract educators who are already employed in various educational support roles to pursue a full teaching qualification, and said applicants would be supported with Department of Education-funded living expenses scholarships, relocation incentives, and mentoring support.
The new program, launched in July, will cost the governments $13.9 million to trial the undergraduate-level employment-based teaching degrees and upskill staff working in Victorian government secondary and specialist schools.
“The undergraduate level employment-based teaching degree initiative opens up teaching to a broader pool of diverse candidates by supporting staff to gain teaching qualifications while working in our schools,” Mr Carroll said.
“The initiative is yet another example of the Victorian Government removing financial and geographical barriers so that our schools can recruit the next generation of dedicated teachers.”
The program is set to start in 2025 and will be delivered by Federation University Australia and La Trobe University, and in the final years of the program, participants will be eligible to start teaching as paraprofessionals.
To learn more, visit www.vic.gov.au/teachthefuture.
