The University of Canberra and the ACT government have expanded a scheme where trainee teachers work with public schools.
The two groups have extended and widened their "Affiliated Schools Agreement" for a second five years to 2028, at a cost of $12.8 million.
In the first five years of the agreement, 25 ACT public schools were chosen to have close ties to the university. Some parts of the scheme will now be made available to all public schools in the ACT.
One of the innovative parts of the agreement involves "pre-service teachers' clinics" where groups of four or five trainee teachers go into a school and teach a class together.
They then meet afterwards to discuss what worked and what didn't work.
This system operates outside Australia but the ACT is the only jurisdiction in the country to use it.
The agreement also makes it easier for university researchers in education to get access to schools to study important topics.
A school might be concerned about the wellbeing of its teachers and there might be a high-powered academic at the university with the expertise to analyse the situation. The two could work together.
ACT Education Minister Yvette Berry hoped schools would grasp the chance to collaborate with the university and its resources, including human resources in the shape of the people training to become teachers.
"I encourage all public schools to embrace the research and professional learning opportunities that will be available across the system through this agreement," she said.
The acting vice-chancellor of the university, Lucy Johnston, said she was proud of the new agreement.
"Collaboration is the common thread connecting each element of the Affiliated Schools Agreement," Professor Johnston said.
"From co-designed, school-based research that has direct value and impact for ACT public schools, to mutually beneficial secondment opportunities. The flow of expertise goes both ways, and benefits the university, ACT public schools, current and future teachers, and school students."
There has been some recent criticism, however, of the standards of some trainee teachers.
The inquiry into literacy and numeracy heard from an expert that some ACT teachers and pre-service teachers lacked basic skills and knowledge to teach spelling and literacy.
Education consultant at Literacy Education Solutions and adjunct associate professor at La Trobe University Dr Tessa Daffern said during her time as an academic teaching literacy and English subjects to pre-service teachers she became worried about low academic standards.
Dr Daffern's research in the ACT revealed teachers' knowledge of words and sentences was not as strong as it should be.
"I found this was also a common issue where teachers and pre-service teachers, not all but some of them, did find it difficult to even articulate what a sentence actually is and how to create a grammatically correct sentence," Dr Daffern said.
