Teacher workforce: fiction vs fact

Abstract

Australia’s education outcomes have deteriorated — despite increased spending on teachers and policy initiatives intended to increase the quantity and quality of the teacher workforce. Education policy is dominated by inputs-based approaches, which see increasing inputs — such as the number of teachers (and, correspondingly smaller class sizes), salaries, and narrow indicators of ‘quality’ (such as level of credentials, years of experience, and teachers’ test scores) — as the path to better education outcomes. But there is little evidence that increasing inputs improves outcomes.