Politicians are naturally drawn to top-down solutions. For one thing, they afford Ministers the illusion of control. For another, they promise quick results.

Ministers for Education from the Australian states have agreed on a major overhaul of teacher education. Their consensus follows a report identifying a range of deficiencies. These include failures to follow scientific evidence on how children learn, to prepare teachers to teach literacy effectively, and to set new teachers up to be capable classroom managers.

The Australian Ministers settled on a top-down solution.

A new organisation, the Initial Teacher Education Quality Assurance Board, will oversee universities’ teacher education programmes. It will have the power to strip universities of accreditation to deliver these programmes if they don’t use evidence-based approaches.

In addition to this stick, there are also carrots. Universities that comply will receive funding incentives.

Following the Australian announcements, New Zealand is considering its own teacher education situation. Education Minister Jan Tinetti is seeking advice from officials on whether the Australian developments are relevant to New Zealand.

National’s Erica Stanford is already clear that change is necessary. In the New Zealand Herald, Stanford was quoted as saying, “Every school that I go into, without doubt, brings up initial teacher education as a huge problem.”

Stanford is right. Teacher education in New Zealand needs serious attention. The problems identified in the Australian report are problems here, too. But is Australia’s top-down, carrot-and-stick approach really the way to go?

New Zealand should consider a bottom-up approach before rushing to follow Australia’s lead.

A key lever for reforming New Zealand’s teacher education programmes is the Standards for the Teaching Profession, set by the Teaching Council. Teachers must meet these standards to practice.

The current Standards are vague and weak. They do not mandate knowledge of the science of learning. They are silent on effective literacy instruction. They say nothing about classroom management skills.

If the Standards required all teachers to demonstrate an ability to apply evidence-based practice in the classroom, universities would quickly come on board. If they did not, their graduates could not be certificated as teachers.

A forthcoming New Zealand Initiative report will lay out a strategy to reform professional standards for teachers. The aim is to amplify existing pockets of quality, rather than directly imposing change from above.

While less politically impressive, and although they take time to yield results, bottom-up policy solutions are usually more durable.