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School leavers would be forced to pass a literacy and numeracy test before enrolling in teaching degrees at university, under a Morrison government plan to improve teaching standards.
As 15,000 angry NSW teachers marched in the streets demanding pay rises of up to 7.5 per cent on Wednesday, the federal government announced $40m in extra funding to recruit hundreds more engineers, lawyers, tech experts and tradies into classrooms.
Acting federal Education Minister Stuart Robert said 700 more mid-career professionals would be retrained through the Teach for Australia program, to enter classrooms next year and in 2024 if the Coalition were re-elected.
He said he was concerned that at least a quarter of maths teachers in Australia were not qualified to teach the subject, and that one in 10 university graduates in education courses were failing the literacy and numeracy test that was required to graduate.
Mr Robert said his 12-year-old son had been able to answer some of the maths questions that 10 per cent of university graduates got wrong. “I was reading out example questions to our sons at the weekend and my boys were answering them,’’ he said.
“The test is designed for the top 30 per cent of (school leavers) and we can’t have the people looking to teach our students failing it.’’ Sample questions include: “This year a teacher spent $383.30 on stationery. Last year the teacher spent $257.85 on stationery. How much more did the teacher spend this...