Legal attendance requirements and national declarations establish a social contract between the State and its citizens for the provision of schooling. Any shortage of teachers compromises the ability of the State to meet its contractable obligations. The sovereignty of the social contract is complex as no single body has ultimate responsibility…

Purpose: The aim of the paper is to examine whether there really is a shortage of VET teachers, and if so, whether there are links to the salary offered and to the qualifications required. Design/methodology/approach: The paper uses three main approaches to examine the narrative of a shortage of VET teachers in Australia. Findings: There was no…

This statistical note updates earlier work on the salaries paid to general staff working at Australia's public universities, and the levels at which universities classify those staff. In 2017, higher proportions of general staff in more senior grades could be found at the University of Technology Sydney, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology,…

Upcoming changes in the teacher labor supply will have an impact on nations that provide government-based education for their youth. Faced with a significant global shortfall of educators, most countries have taken steps to incentivize teaching as a profession and ensure that qualified teachers are available to students in all locations --…

Teacher accountability reforms implemented around the globe have heightened a sense that teachers are losing the support of policymakers and the general public. To examine the global pattern in teachers' perception of occupational value and identify possible outcomes and predictors, we analyzed the 2018 Teaching and Learning International Survey…

Teacher shortages have intensified across several OECD countries, making this an urgent priority for education systems. Between 2015 and 2022, the share of students whose principals reported shortages rose from 29% to 46.7% on average across the OECD. Simultaneously, rapid technological advances, such as artificial intelligence (AI), and broader…

Recent scholarship on universities explores how academics' families and partners restrict their careers and how academic labour limits these relationships, both in highly gendered ways. Such research less often considers how people's close relations might unevenly support them in continuously relocating; dedicating unpaid time to 'career…

The aim of this article is to examine current national early years' policy reform, which emphasises the importance of service integration, national quality standards and a quality knowledge base for educators concerning the provision of early childhood education and care. Using Queensland, Australia, as an example, a policy discourse analysis…

Problematic policy constructions of the purpose of education implicate professional identities and working conditions of professionals working with the youngest children. This paper builds on our earlier writing, to contest teacher professional identities in Australia, Ireland, Denmark and the United States of America, to illustrate the crucial…

This paper reports the findings of an analysis of a collection of Statutory Declaration forms completed by teachers seeking exemption from dismissal under the "NSW Married Women (Lecturers and Teachers) Act" (1932-1947). Most sought exemption on hardship grounds, recording details of their husbands' inability or unwillingness to provide…

Curriculum plays an important role in ensuring continuity and progression from early childhood education and care (ECEC) to primary education. The alignment of curricula and standards across these settings shapes children's early experiences with education systems, with implications for children's relationships and engagement in both ECEC and…

Using Stochastic Frontier Analysis, this article examines the efficiency and effectiveness of financial inputs and demographic data for educational outputs as measured by the Year 12 results for New South Wales secondary schools using a panel dataset from 2005 to 2010. Effective schools, in these analyses, are those that have higher Year 12…

Many developed countries, including Australia, struggle to recruit and retain adequate numbers of school teachers. Over the past decade every Australian state has experienced teacher shortages and, at various times, there has been a national shortfall of qualified teaching staff. This paper considers the reporting of teacher shortage in four…

Debate about teacher gender balance in primary education is a constant. This debate is fuelled by recommendations to increase recruitment and retainment of males into primary education. In parallel, 10-year trend data indicate a continual decrease in male primary school teachers. Although many factors contribute to the decreasing percentage of…

There may be a perception among academic staff that professional staff are remote from academic activities (Wallace and Marchant, 2011), however, recent research demonstrates that professional staff, across a range of roles and seniority levels, are interested and engaged in supporting positive student learning outcomes (Graham, 2012, 2013a,…