For the last 10-plus years, AITSL has led the development and implementation of the national Teacher Standards, the national Principal Standard, and a wide range of evidence-based tools and resources that are well used by teachers across Australia.
The Standards and the work of AITSL are acknowledged as world-class by international governments and education institutions, who are now looking to Australia as an example of how to get this right.
And why shouldn’t they? Australia’s 346,000 teachers are amongst the world’s best.
AITSL exists to support quality teaching and school leadership and has built a strong foundation of evidence and expertise. We will continue to build upon this foundation, utilising the expertise of Australia’s teachers, leaders, and our other Key Partners across the education landscape, including representatives from a range of key education organisations – all working together to help our learners to succeed.
Evidence shows that teaching expertise is key, which is the very reason we have used it to frame our new Strategic Plan, detailing our priorities over the next 4 years.
As the nation’s trusted advisor on quality teaching and school leadership, we continue doing what we do best – developing, esteeming, and investing in expertise. Our journey continues into the next decade.
Collectively, we’re all working together to improve learner outcomes, and we know the evidence shows that it is quality teaching that has the most significant impact. This is why initiatives like the national Certification of Highly Accomplished and Lead Teachers are so important.
To become nationally certified as a Highly Accomplished or Lead Teacher (HALT), a teacher demonstrates their high-quality practice and how it has had an impact on their learners, colleagues, and their school community.
Esteeming teachers and recognising their expertise through HALT certification benefits the individual teacher and contributes to an increased culture of learning amongst staff, enabling quality teaching to impact across the school and all learners.
Our expert teachers get affirmation through the certification process as it is a formal acknowledgment and recognition of one’s expertise and achievements. Essentially, certified teachers become a strong voice for the profession, advocating not only for quality teaching, but also for the recognition of that quality.
Why is this important? Advocating and supporting one another leads to higher retention rates and increases the overall quality of the teaching workforce. With the teaching workforce under continued pressure, exacerbated by the past few years of COVID and now the flu, we need to keep as many teachers working with learners as possible.
We should be proud of our teachers, school leaders, and expert practitioners, and we should celebrate their achievements and the value they will continue to bring to the profession.
I welcome you to read our new Strategic Plan and what AITSL is doing over the next 4 years to further support expertise, and I encourage you all to consider certification as part of your professional learning journey.
More than ever, we want to retain our best teachers and school leaders, don’t we? I know our learners will thank us later.