An HSC band four minimum will soon be made a requirement for entering a primary teaching degree, under new provisions outlined in the state's education shake-up.
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Students sitting their HSC exams in 2021 will be the first to observe by the new rule, which will apply to prospective teachers in the NSW primary school public education system.
It follows the Berejiklian government's announcement late last week, that maths will soon be made compulsory for all students from kindergarten to year 12.
Riverina organiser of the NSW Teachers Federation, John Pratt, has welcomed the announcements.
"Anything which improves education outcomes of students and potential students is valued," Mr Pratt said.
"Maths is one of the classes that does grade well for the ATAR, and those highly intellectual subjects are where we want to be drawing our teachers from."
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Mr Pratt described the initiative as a way to future-proof the education system and return the prestige of teaching as a career path.
"It is important that higher students are seeking to be teachers," he said.
"Increasingly, we're seeing the reverse happening, with deans and universities lowering the ATAR requirement, taking in low teacher cohorts of students who have not achieved sufficiently well at school being allowed into the course."
From his perspective, Mr Pratt believes the announcement is the first step towards restoring the societal value of teachers.
"If it's to return to being a high-status profession, the start is for students to see teaching as a genuine and valid career," Mr Pratt said.
"That starts by making it more difficult to become a teacher, hone them appropriately.
"Every politician and radio host thinks they know what the classroom needs, just because they went to school once.
"That's not the case, only those who are qualified to do so can really maintain an effective classroom."
Furthermore, Mr Pratt said that raising the statewide results in the NAPLAN, HSC and classroom exams requires rigorous knowledge and effort from the teaching staff.
"Academic requirements for teachers must be made akin to what we demand of our high achieving students," he said.
"What we need to see is potential teachers being taken from the top bands, and mature-age students being able to demonstrate an ability to engage at an intellectual level before they engage with students.
"We can't have teachers speaking to students about the world they are going to step into without first having been in that world."