Page 3343 - Week 09 - Thursday, 22 August 2019
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bill will provide to all stakeholders and the increased transparency and clarity it will offer to new and existing teachers. On that basis we are pleased to support the bill today.
MS ORR (Yerrabi) (11.11): The Teacher Quality Institute Amendment Bill 2019 supports the government’s strategy for the future of education over the next 10 years. In particular, the bill supports the strategy’s foundation “empowered learning professionals”. The bill is about building the quality of the teaching workforce and improving government’s capacity to ensure that there are quality teachers available into the future to meet the needs of ACT students.
Minister Berry has spoken about the pre-service teacher register, which will deliver an online platform and contact points where pre-service teachers can be supported through their teacher training into the teaching profession.
I am sure almost all of us have experienced the transformative power of an effective teacher. If we were particularly fortunate, we had numerous exceptional teachers who made school an exciting and interesting place. Those teachers possessed a passion for the subjects that they taught and inspired us to play with ideas, think deeply about the subject matter, take on more challenging work, and set us on the path of being lifelong learners. These are the sorts of teachers we want to emerge from our teacher education institutions.
Pre-service teachers identify that in-school experience is one of the most valuable experiences of their teacher education program. They value the opportunities to connect what they learn at university with real-world practice. The practicum allows pre-service teachers to increase their confidence, improve their skills and build their readiness for the realities of the classroom.
Professional experience provides the opportunity for prospective teachers to learn and practice the art of teaching, reflect on and learn from their experiences, observe and be mentored by experienced teachers, experience working in a school community, and commence their professional life as a teacher.
Since the commencement of the Teacher Quality Institute Act 2011, there has been an increased emphasis on strengthening initial teacher education to ensure that graduates are ready to teach. To prepare them for day one, and their teaching future, high quality professional experience is critical. For this reason, in 2018 the government launched the professional experience framework, which provides the direction for schools and universities to provide high quality practicum to pre-service teachers. This bill builds on that work.
While the pre-service teacher register can be seen as a precursor to teacher registration, it will be made clear to pre-service teachers that their enrolment on the register is not an approval to teach in the ACT; rather, it enables them to undertake professional experience placements in an ACT school. Establishing a pre-service teacher register, as occurs through the bill, will assist universities and schools to provide high quality, practical in-school teaching experience so that schoolteachers are better equipped with the classroom skills they need when they graduate.
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