A HUNTER education expert has called for more incentives to encourage graduate teachers to move to the bush.
Appearing as a witness for the second time in the state government's inquiry into teacher shortages in NSW, Dean of Education at the University of Newcastle Professor Susan Ledger said government policies are "very much metro-centric".
"We can't get our teachers out to the country, it's very costly," Professor Ledger told the inquiry, chaired by One Nation MLC Mark Latham. "This has been a long-standing issue for rural and remote. It's not just a decade it's probably about five decades."
As well as her role with UoN, Professor Ledger is research director and journal editor with the Society for the Provision of Education in Rural Australia (SPERA). She said a major challenge getting teachers to the regions stems from attitudes towards those communities.
"I think that's part of the need for us to actually really enforce the positives of teaching in rural and remote centres."
SPERA's submission to the inquiry cites research from the University of Wollongong saying pre-service teachers who study in their community are more likely to remain in that location. But Professor Ledger said accommodation is a "huge factor" hindering rural placements.
"It's the number one issue for all our students whether they are going rural, regional or remote," Ms Ledger said. "We can't get accommodation short-term the rents are so expensive."
She said there are examples of teachers living "in cars, in tents" due to a lack of accommodation.
Professor Ledger called on the inquiry to look at how to attract students into the profession, support them through the program and specialise in rural and remote or Indigenous studies.
Last week, a meeting of education ministers agreed to explore incentives like scholarships with a focus on regional and remote teaching degrees and "to increase the supply of new teachers, including to schools in disadvantaged communities by delivering 5000 bursaries".
In September last year, as part of their Teacher Supply Strategy, the NSW Government committed $15 million to rural and remote initiatives including increasing the value of targeted recruitment bonuses from $10,000 to up to $20,000 and doubling the number of teach.Rural scholarships to 120 per year.
While she praised incentives in the strategy, Ms Ledger said "it only goes a tiny way into actually encouraging and enticing [student teachers] in that area".
"We often have shortages in the area which means we can't have mentor teachers training our pre-service teachers," she said. "I would nominate that we differentiate and actually suggest supernumerary people in the regional and remote areas to support not only new graduates but our pre-service teachers.
"What we are doing now is really important, getting everyone that's got some sort of commitment to rural and remote education to get together and solve it."
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