Policy effects of regulating admission into initial teacher education degrees in New South Wales

ABSTRACT

The low Australian Tertiary Admissions Ranks (ATARs) of Initial Teacher Education (ITE) students are routinely highlighted in the media and in reviews of ITE, with the perception that such students will be unable to become effective teachers. As part of the NSW Government’s Great Teaching, Inspired Learning (GTIL) Framework, minimum academic entrance standards were introduced in 2016, with the intention of improving both teacher status and quality. Drawing upon Ball’s notion of policy effects and policy enactment, this paper critically explores these increased academic admissions requirements and reports on one aspect of a multiple case study research project. In doing so, I respond to the following research question, “what are the first and second order effects of policy designed to regulate admission into ITE in NSW?” Using interviews with senior ITE academics and university student recruitment personnel, findings from the study indicate that the policy has impacted the structure of ITE degrees, the quality, number and diversity of ITE students and is possibly excluding potential ITE students. I argue that despite these effects, in practice the same students are entering ITE, therefore demonstrating the disjoint between intention and enactment in policy implementation.

KEYWORDS:

• Initial teacher education
• New South Wales
• university admission
• education policy

Acknowledgments

The author would like to acknowledge the valuable feedback of Nicole Mockler, Kelly Freebody, Glenn Savage and the two anonymous reviewers on previous versions of this manuscript.

Ethics statement

The current study was approved by The Human Research Ethics Committee of The University of Sydney”.

Notes

1. ATAR is a rank between 0.00 and 99.95 that indicates a students’ position, relative to their peers, following their final high school examinations. It is commonly used to assess students’ eligibility for entry into Australian undergraduate university degrees.

2. Results in the HSC are divided into 6 bands and each band is aligned with a specific set of 10 marks between 1 and 100. A Band 5 results means that a student achieved marks between 80 and 89.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Amanda Freeborn

Amanda Freeborn is a PhD candidate at Amanda Freeborn is a PhD candidate in The Sydney School of Education and Social Work at The University of Sydney.