The Deputy Prime Minister of Australia, Julia Gillard, who also happens to double as Education Minister feels inspired by a British teacher recruitment drive. She is so inspired by the recruitment drive that she is hoping to introduce it to Australia.Australia suffers a chronic teacher shortage for a number of reasons. Primarily among these is that teachers were underpaid for the value that they provide to the community through education and many simply became more valuable in the private sector and in other fields.
The recruitment drive was somewhat provocatively themed, "Those who can, teach". There were other catchy little slogans used such as, "Use your head, teach". It seems that this has resulted in a significant increase in the numbers of undergraduates entering into teaching based degrees.
However, the government's only real commitment to date on this front is to offer to halve the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS) fees for those graduates that take a teaching qualification. I think that a commitment to raising salaries might go a fair way to "inspiring" people to get into teaching.
I guess we wait and see!
