joining me now is the national manager
of the ipa's class action program
Colleen harken colen we've got more than
1500 teaching positions vacant in
Victoria with some schools having to
split classes or shut early because they
can't find any Educators to fill the
spots The Herald son reports 771 jobs
were posted in the past week last year
you might remember Dan Andrews uh
government announced teaching degrees
would be free graduate teachers even
being offered bonuses to subsidize uh
their start of their careers in
government schools or help them move to
Regional areas why is none of this
working well Richard that program that
was announced last year actually doesn't
start until this year and it takes four
years yeah four years for those students
to get through the system but the real
question is will they ever be qualified
to to leader classroom because our
research shows that of that four years
that they're about to spend at the
university only 10 weeks of it is
dedicated to the teaching learning the
schools to teach Reading Writing uh
Science History so they'll spend the
next 10 weeks only 10 weeks out of their
full four-year University degree so the
priorities of the universities are
really warped and undermining their
ability to become competent and Happy
Teachers so uh that program to be fair
better them will take a while for it to
work through the system but it still
doesn't mean we're going to have capable
and competent teachers at the end of the
four years so what are they spending
their time on if so much of it isn't on
what you would expect them to be
spending it on what what what's the
priority well the priority is uh like
the national curriculum it's woke
content um you know university courses
that are called things like is skin
color a pigment of your imagination for
example so the the prior PR ities in the
um the university curriculum are as
warped as the national curriculum
they're not prioritize prioritizing the
skill set that's required to do the job
which of course then means that the
people who are coming at the other end
are not skilled in the job they have to
do to manage a classroom our classrooms
are some of the worst in the world we
are 71st out of 80 in the oecd in ter in
terms of classroom disciplinary
requirement and if you've spent four
years of your University degree learning
how to be a global Warrior instead of
how to a great teacher that's not going
to be very satisfying at the end of the
day absolutely and if we're basically
telling anyone who's got a a
conservative ideology you're not welcome
in this profession cuz you're going to
just have to be indoctrinating kids
relentlessly in leftist group think
that's a large chunk of the potential
teacher pool that's gone and we've also
really not encouraging men to enter this
profession it seems to be dominated by
women and again so you've got another
50% of the population gone that can't be
helping with the teacher shortage well
statistically that's clearly true but
the real issue is that teacher teaching
as a a profession is not really sort of
appealing to most people at the moment
because of the conditions of the
curriculum of having the
cross-curriculum priorities of
prioritizing Aboriginal and torist state
Islanders history and cultures and
sustainability ahead of actually the
skill set that the children require to
the way they inject that into every
subject from music to matths is
astonishing sustainability and uh what
they call First Nations correct yeah so
that that's a stated priority in the
National curriculum so it doesn't State
uh our priorities to make sure that kids
can read and write to become critical
thinkers in their own right it actually
States the priority that uh
sustainability in Aboriginal and toate
island is is what they should be
learning at every opportunity and I do
also worry about the state of our un
iers ities because the hostile
environment that's been fostered there
the far-left activism that is scaring
off some Jewish students uh some of them
are deferring uh declining to attend
classes and then we've got people from
all sorts of backgrounds not just Jewish
students who are self- censoring who are
really scared to say what they think
because they are worried about an attack
from academics and and their fellow
students it's it's not a healthy culture
we've built in in Academia not at all
and that the universities have rolled
over to a small um minority with a very
specific activist agenda is a is a
terrible precedent that has been set um
universities are supposed to be places
of the big contest of ideas and the
freedom of speech to you know position
to take your position on a point and
argue it out uh and that's not happening
at all that on that first day those
protests at uh Melbourne University
6,000 students would declined the the
opportunity to go to their own
classrooms so and learn you know enjoy
the subjects that they're paying to to
study uh and the the universities are
capitulating to this is is a terrible
problem Oh I do worry about the learning
outcomes because we've already gone
through the covid era where we had so
much remote learning and now some people
are opting for remote because the
campuses have got encampments happening
and all sorts of protests and hostility
and uh the the university heads don't
seem to be too concerned they they are
more concerned about the overseas
numbers coming in which uh prop up the
balance sheet uh Colleen Harkin we could
talk about this all day thank you so
much for your time this evening really
do appreciate it