A Sydney university is taking a leading role in addressing the region’s critical shortage of teachers by participating in a national program aimed at fast-tracking the development of primary and secondary educators.
Western Sydney University’s (WSU) School of Education has been awarded more than $3m in funding over the next three years as part of the Australian Government’s High Achieving Teachers (HAT) program expansion.
This pilot program focuses on preparing and accelerating the training of new teachers to meet the specific needs of Western Sydney’s diverse schools, with a particular emphasis on those from varied socio-cultural and linguistic backgrounds. The initiative aims to enhance the region’s educational workforce by fostering diversity in teaching staff to better reflect the multicultural communities they serve.
Dean of the school of education, Professor Michele Simons, highlighted the unique nature of the program, which will recruit 100 applicants from a network of Community Language Teachers. These candidates collectively speak more than 80 languages and bring distinctive multilingual and cross-cultural skills to the classroom.
“Our schools in Western Sydney are among some of the most culturally and linguistically diverse in the country,” Professor Simons said.
“We want our initial teacher education programs to also reflect that incredible community diversity. We need more highly-skilled teachers who can bring their own unique multilingual and cross-cultural capabilities into the classroom.”
Data from WSU’s Centre for Western Sydney revealed that 40.9% of the region’s residents were born outside of Australia. Similarly, figures from the NSW Department of Education demonstrated that 37% of public school students come from homes where languages other than English are spoken. The number of languages spoken in these homes has risen to over 240, an increase of 12% in 2020 alone.
Professor Simons noted many participants in the HAT program have prior experience as educators or school leaders in their home countries, and possess postgraduate qualifications in key subjects such as maths, science, English, and technology. The program aims to tap into this pool of skilled individuals, retraining them to meet the educational demands of Western Sydney.
“This program is all about creating a more sustainable pipeline of highly-qualified graduate teachers to work in our classrooms.”