Reforming teachers: how will the government’s Initial Teacher Education reform agenda affect the sector?

There have been more than 100 reviews of teacher education in Australia since the 1970s.¹ Reforming teaching and teacher education appears to have been seen as a ‘policy problem’ by successive Australian governments for a long time. The Commonwealth government’s latest Initial Teacher Education (ITE) reform agenda appears to be motivated by responding to an apparent plateau in Australian primary and secondary school students’ performance in literacy, numeracy and science subjects in comparison with that of other developed nations. The Conversation noted that during the same reporting period, 1995–2015, “high-performing countries such as Singapore, Korea, Hong Kong, Chinese Taipei and Japan made steady improvements, while other countries including Canada, England, Ireland, Northern Ireland and the US have improved and now outperform Australia”.²