Page 4020 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 16 Sept 2009
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positions that are difficult to staff—for example, in remote communities or disadvantaged schools—we must be very cautious as to how any merit-based system may link to schools or school scores.
In February 2007, Lawrence Ingvarson, a national expert in measuring teacher quality and a research fellow at the Australian Council for Educational Research, was commissioned by the federal government to research performance pay for teachers. One of his conclusions was that student results provide an invalid base for identifying high performing teachers for pay rises. It is worth noting that in a recent survey of parents conducted by the Australian Parents and Citizens Council, parents ranked teacher quality much higher than the school’s results in public tests or exams.
While we support the spirit of Ms Burch’s motion, at this stage we do also want to state that there is a lack of detail in the initiatives being considered. We look forward to seeing what detailed measures the ACT government, in consultation with the commonwealth, puts forward in relation to this important area.
MR BARR (Molonglo—Minister for Education and Training, Minister for Children and Young People, Minister for Planning and Minister for Tourism, Sport and Recreation) (10.47): I thank Ms Burch for raising this matter today and Ms Hunter for her very thoughtful contribution. It is an important issue for the Assembly to debate and it is indisputable that quality teaching is at the core of improving educational results. So today I would like to take a little time to discuss the importance of teacher quality, outline the ACT’s new teacher quality institute and to discuss in some detail initiatives to develop merit-based promotion systems and pay our best classroom teachers six-figure salaries.
I have considered the evidence and taken the best advice on the importance of teacher quality. The latest research from eminent academics such as Professor John Hattie and the late Dr Ken Rowe shows that teachers do make the most significant difference to student learning and performance. A recent report released by consultants McKinsey and Co assessed international research, OECD data, interviews and school visits to establish what makes great schools. The report concluded that recruiting, retaining and training the best people to become teachers made all the difference. Put simply, the main driver of variation in student learning at a school is the quality of the teachers.
This is why we are hiring an additional 21 literacy and numeracy specialists to train all ACT teachers in our public system in the important building blocks of education—reading, writing and arithmetic. We do want the best teachers in our classrooms. And to get them there and to keep them there, we need to pay top salaries. Parents will see that their kids’ best teachers get the pay and promotion that they deserve: six-figure salaries for the best classroom teachers; seniority out and merit in. The era of promotion by exhaustion is over.
Teachers will have a clear merit-based career path to encourage innovation and flexibility and to reward effort and excellence. Teachers who do excel must have the opportunity to advance through the promotional structure more quickly. Under the government’s agenda to improve teacher quality, if you are good you will be
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