This is a bit old but I’m not sure it got the attention it deserved. At least the formal announcement last month slipped me by.
A few months ago, The Age had a thoroughly idiotic article, on Western Australian teachers “exploiting a loophole” to be able to teach in Victoria. The article concerned Western Australia’s 2014 decision to reintroduce one-year teaching degrees, thus reneging on a national agreement that postgrad teaching degrees be two years. Then, since the States have mutual recognition agreements on teaching degrees, it meant that these 1-year WA teachers were qualified to teach in Victoria.
Whether prompted by The Age‘s shit-stirring, or simply through his own stupidity, Ben Carroll then banned these 1-year WA teachers to the extent he could. Last month, the Victorian Government issued a press release:
VICTORIA CONTINUES TO PUT STUDENT LEARNING FIRST
The Allan Labor Government is banning teachers with interstate one-year degrees from teaching in Victorian government schools – ensuring all students receive a quality education from properly qualified educators.
Deputy Premier and Minister for Education Ben Carroll today announced changes to Victoria’s teacher recruitment policy, preventing teachers from Western Australia from working in government schools unless they have completed a postgraduate initial teacher education degree of at least two years’ duration.
…
The Government has written to the Victoria Catholic Education Authority and Independent Schools Victoria to encourage them to review their own employment policies to prevent the undermining of nationally consistent standards of initial teacher education programs and graduates.
This is an utterly moronic decision. The teaching rounds excepted, ITE students learn bugger all in their teaching degrees, and one year is more than sufficient for the half-baked pedagogy and the cheap philosophy and the dirt cheap sociology that the students receive.
God knows what inspired this idiocy from Carroll. A couple days ago, I wrote that Carroll is a very good education minister, and he is. But this decision from Carroll is very bad, and simply nuts.
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UPDATE (09/11/25)
An important question came up in the comments, as to whether Carroll’s idiotic decision was to have pre-WA retroactive application, making the decision really idiotic. The answer, which, as it happens, affects me, is “No”. I contacted the Minister’s office, who handballed me to the Department of Education. The DoE pointed me to a DoE webpage on Policies and Guidelines on government school employment. That page contains the following advice:
To be eligible for employment, transfer or promotion in the teacher class, a person must:
• have provisional or full registration from the Victorian Institute of Teaching (the Institute); and
• if the person completed an Australian postgraduate level initial teaching program or course of study on or after 1 January 2024, they must demonstrate that they have satisfactorily completed a postgraduate level accredited initial teacher education program that has been accredited by an Australian State or Territory Teacher Regulatory Authority as satisfying the requirements of the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership ‘Accreditation of initial teacher education programs in Australia: Standards and Procedures’. [emphasis added]
So, at least Carroll’s idiocy is not retroactive. As for the “requirements” of the AITSL clowns, they can be found in the accreditation of ITE programs document. The relevant standard is 4.1, noting that ITE programs must “comprise at least two years of full-time equivalent professional studies” (where the term “professional” is clearly being used in the Terry Gilliam sense).
Hear, hear, Marty!
It has taken me a while to get to it, but I have slowly come to the realisation that a fair bit of academia is a complete waste of space. An apprenticeship model would be a far better way of training teachers (after having got their initial degrees).
Without doubt.
Does this mean that someone with a 4-year Honors degree & a 1year grad dip ed, won’t be able to teach year 11 & 12 Methods or Specialist Math? That is just stupid! The education Department wants all teachers to be experienced in teaching brain dead 10-year-olds how to count! Probably it is an embarrassment that many primary teachers in Victoria have not done even year 11 general math. There was an enquiry into the falling standards of Math & Science in schools about 20 years ago. Makes interesting reading. Next to no primary teachers in a region in Victoria could workout 15% of 550 without a calculator. Nothing has changed!
Yes, it is that stupid. (Note that Carroll has no power to ban grad dip teachers from other than public schools. I don’t know if Catholic and Independent schools have followed suit, as Carroll was hoping.)
It brings up a very good point. Does Carroll’s decision also affect those who got 1 year degrees before the 2-year idiocy was implemented? One would assume not, since that would require an extra level of insanity, and would create chaos for less than zero reason. But I don’t know the answer.
Retrospective laws???
Anything goes these days?
But we don’t know that it’s retroactive, do we? The media release reads that way, but it’s a media release, not the legislation or regulation providing the substance.
Speaking as an ex-bureaucrat, here is my guess. The Minister has to follow the law in Victoria, which says that WA registered teachers are legally allowed to work in Victorian schools. It’s rather hard for him to change that. So that will remain.
Separately as the funder of Government schools, he can pretty much make them do anything. Hence he will likely direct Govt schools not to employ such WA Dip Ed teachers who got their quals since 2014.
Since people tend to get angry if you stop them doing things they are already doing, he is likely to have this only apply to employing new teachers from now on. So – unlikely to be retrospective. Note – this is purely my surmise based upon knowing how the system generally works.
You first paragraph directly contradicts what Carroll said.
How so?
“The Allan Labor Government is banning teachers with interstate one-year degrees from teaching in Victorian government schools.”
The way press releases used to work was that the media advisors would do a draft and then we’d check it. It was always a tussle to make sure something that was factually incorrect but sounded simple and good didn’t go out. You’d sometimes negotiate (not exactly from a position of huge strength) on the words and use your persuasive skills as much as possible. In those days, the public service code was that you always stuck to the truth (not the whole of it obviously) in documents (required very very careful wording of course). Suspect that may have changed.
From AI: “The policy requires that teachers with Australian postgraduate initial teacher education (ITE) qualifications completed on or after January 1, 2024, must have completed a program that meets the national accreditation standards set by the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL). These standards specify that postgraduate ITE programs must be at least two years full-time equivalent in length.”
So on the basis of what I can see it looks like the Press Release is wrong – surprise surprise. But I haven’t done detailed policy research so I could still be wrong, but somehow I doubt it.
I don’t think AI is going to help here, and I don’t think you can conclude that the press release was wrong, or anything.
There is, or at least was, a double-pronged agreement:
1) A teaching qualification from State X would be recognised in State Y.
2) All postgrad teaching degrees would be at least 2 years.
WA reneged on (2), leaving stats like Victoria to decided what to do about (1). It would seem that Victoria has not directly renounced (1), but they have chosen instead to undermine it. Whether that undermining is retroactive or not is anyone’s guess.
One needs a clear statement from the Minister or the DoE, pointing to the actual implementation. That should indicate the extent of retroactivity, if any.
Yeah – studied maths abroad and planning to teach; this is the main thing stopping me from returning to Melbourne to do so.
I don’t think you’re the muppet in this instance.
It is truly amazing how the Victorian education department institutes more and more elaborate obstacles to becoming a capable teacher, for instance the VIT protocols for beginning teachers, while inventing at the same time more and more pointless tasks that take time (as well as money) away from core tasks. Nonetheless they automatically renew the contracts of blatantly incompetent principals. It’s further evidence of managerialism’s dedication to the the principle that appearance trumps reality.
The VIT is loathsome, but I don’t think this particular idiocy can be pinned on them.
One consideration might be that since everything is offered online these days, why would anyone bother with the 2 year degree and instead just take the 1 year course over the internet.
There isn’t much to be said for ITE, of course, but I expect the two year rule serves to create an entry barrier that in the end benefits teachers by creating at least the illusion of professionalism and limiting supply
Of course the point of the 2 year thing is the illusion of professionalism. It is, as JJ puts it, credentialism.
I guess “limiting supply” is a benefit to current teachers. But society pays for it.
I think the idea of apprenticeships sounds good – until you consider who young teachers might find themselves apprenticed to – and what they might be lead to believe as best practice in teaching.
Now, if Marty were to take on the responsibility of training all the potential teacher apprentices…
Hah! I’d suck at it. My classroom skills are abysmal. But I take your point.
But but, there is really no alternative. The way to learn to teach is to teach. You hopefully do it with sane people around to guide you, which, yeah, is not playing the odds. But you have no choice.
“One needs a clear statement from the Minister or the DoE” – as Sir Humphrey would have said, if I have been clear, I have clearly mis-spoken. If you can find it, I’ll be interested.
I have contacted DoE. Of course I’ll update the post if and when the DoE responds,
I got a clarification on the retroactivity question. See the update to the post.