Wednesday, 1 November 2023

Teachers

Renee HEATH (Eastern Victoria) (18:02): (560) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Education, and the action that I seek is for the minister to establish a taskforce to review and hear the experiences of new teachers in order to support better teaching practice and student outcomes. Recently I spoke with a young teacher who told me about the less glamorous side of teaching. From a young age she had dreamt of becoming a teacher. When she decided to study teaching, she envisaged imparting a love of learning and making a positive impact on the next generation. However, she said sometimes those goals are completely overshadowed purely because the class is out of control. She said, ‘They never told me how to handle this at uni.’ She is limited in what she can do to deal with poor behaviour, and she described keeping an orderly classroom as overwhelming. Again today I heard from a student-teacher. She said that they did one class on how the classroom culture operates but received no training on how to control and maintain a disciplined classroom.

Data from the OECD’s disciplinary climate index, an indicator of students’ experience in class, showed that 15-year-olds in Australia are among the most disruptive and disorderly in the world, ranking 69 out of 76 school systems. According to that study, about two in five students say kids do not listen to the teacher. About half say that noise or disruption is present in most or all lessons, and this is taking a toll on students and teachers alike. About one in four teachers find maintaining classroom discipline difficult, and intimidation and bullying are common in about one in three schools.

It is mostly the educational progressives that downplay the importance of classroom behaviour, but the ones who benefit most are the students who have been disengaged or do not come from stable or supportive households. Calm and orderly classrooms benefit all students, no matter their background, but mostly the best impacts are seen on the ones that are disengaged. There are some universities that are teaching specific classroom management strategies as part of their program, and they are seeing great results. I think that our teachers deserve the best, and we need to do our best too. Minister, our teachers are feeling disempowered to act and our students are facing challenges as a result. We need to encourage and support best teaching practice, and I implore you to act urgently.