National Professional Standards for Teachers

Extracts from a statement by The Hon. Peter Garrett, Minister for Education, 25th Nov. 2011 regarding teacher performance and development.

The National Professional Standards for Teachers will be used to develop an accreditation scheme for all teachers which will include reward payments for the top two levels. Personally I am think the National Professional Standards for Teachers are a great thing for our profession, however I’m not sold on ‘Reward Payments’.

“Under improvements to the Reward Payments for Great Teachers initiative, teachers who are accredited to the highest level of the standards will be rewarded with $7500 for Highly Accomplished teachers and $10,000 for teachers who achieve the Lead Teacher level.”

These payments are not that far away!

  • I wonder how this process will work?
  • How equitable will it be?
  • Will it encourage or discourage collaboration between teachers?
  • Will it be divisive within schools?
  • Will it make teachers ‘teach to the test’ more to get great NAPLAN results?

“In line with the Government’s election commitment, the first reward payments will be delivered in 2014 for teachers who have been assessed against the standards in 2013.”

All teachers will be required to undertake a review of their performance. Again, how this process works will be very interesting indeed. Physically observing teachers and collating parent feedback etc for every teacher in Australia will be a big job.

  • Will this process be conducted by people from outside the school?
  • If not what will be the increase in workload to staff?
  • If the process is run internally by schools how will it remain fair when a potential payment of $7500-$10000 is one of the end results?

“The Australian Teacher Performance and Development Framework will deliver a yearly appraisal of every teacher in every school.”

Mr Garrett said under the new performance framework all teachers will receive regular and constructive feedback on their progress, as well as opportunities for further professional development. The framework will set out the aspects of a teacher’s performance that will be assessed and will include lesson observations, student results, parental feedback, and contribution to the school community.”

Are you interested in research about what motivates us? Suprisingly it is not always money! You tube video of Daniel Pink who is the author of several provocative, bestselling books about the changing world of work.

It seems the teachers in Victorian trials for performance pay are not jumping at the chance.

Read full release from  the Minister here.

To view the National Professional Standards for Teachers click on the page link on this blog.

A Different Way of Informing

During 2012 staff will be involved in either familiarisation of The Australian Curriculum or TfEL/pedagogy development. Because of this staff will have different focuses and it will rarely be possible to conduct whole staff discussions as everyone’s focus will be different i.e. subject based differences with the AC or pedagogy differences with those using TfEL.

So to avoid wasting valuable meeting time I will be posting information or creating screencasts (audio visual) for this blog as a way of informing staff of the agenda and purpose of meetings involving the Australian Curriculum and TfEL. Having already been given the relevant information prior to the meetingmay help streamline meetings and save time.

Two further benefits to this process will be firstly that as you read posts, view screencasts, access resources you can leave comments for me. This provides you with a direct way of (politely) telling me something is not working well or that you have enjoyed a particular aspect of what we have been doing. Commenting also allows you to contribute and share your thoughts and ideas for others to read. Secondly for those staff unable to make staff meetings it will hopefully provide a way of keeping up with what is happening at school.

I strongly believe staff learning about the AC/TfEL needs to be lead by individual staff not by me. I will facilitate the process but I will not be telling you how to use the AC in your teaching or be requiring you to focus on specific aspects of TfEL. You will lead your learning through discussion with your peers (which includes me!).

Every post or screencast placed on this site will be emailed to the r5@ and 612@ email addresses. You can then determine what is useful or not, and thereby lead your own learning.

Welcome

Hi all

I have created this web page to give a home to resources for curriculum and pedagogy. This will include all information and resources that come out as part of the Australian Curriculum and Teaching for Effective Learning. It will however be broader than just these two areas and I hope that the blog can provide information to all teaching staff that will be useful.

This site is all about sharing information but that is limited if the information shared is only coming from me. It would be great for all staff to contribute resources that will support teaching and learning in the school R-12. If you get me the information I will do the leg work and post it then email the link to staff so the information can be shared.

How to Contribute

1. Give me the URL link to a website you think is a great resource and maybe a sentence or two about who it would be useful for and why. I can then create a link from this site.

2. If you have a Document in word, Excel or Power Point that you think would be a useful resource pass the file onto me with a one or two sentence explanation of who it would be useful for and why. I will upload it to my Google Docs account and create a link to it from this site.

3. Read a great article on curriculum or pedagogy? Send me the link or file path and I can insert a link to it from this site.

 

It is not an expectation to check this site regularly but when something new is put on here I will send an email with the appropriate link to all teaching staff. That way you can remain informed but not have to come here on a regular basis.

Hope it’s useful……………..