Some Australian politicians believe sacking the bottom 5% of teachers is the answer to improving student achievement.

Last week in Melbourne, I interviewed academics at a number of universities, researchers at the Australian Council of Education Research (ACER), media commentators, and think tank researchers.

The performance of the Australian education system has become a major topic of discussion and debate over the past five years in Victoria and beyond. The growing criticism of teacher education, teachers and school performance has been exacerbated of late by the relatively poor performance of Australian (and New Zealand) students in international tests measuring fundamental knowledge in maths, science and literacy.

The result of this frustration with the education system has been a major push by the federal government to improve teacher quality, a task made more difficult because of the individual states’ control of education policy and the lack of communication between the states – and between the states and the federal government. In addition, the federal government has been overly simplistic in its approach to reform, suggesting, as mentioned above, sacking the bottom 5% of teachers.

Slash tactics like this are a band aid solution and point the finger squarely at teachers. For student achievement to improve, the system must be re-designed to attract, select, train and develop excellent teachers as teachers are the biggest in-school influence on student achievement.

Attracting the right people into teaching is a starting point, and making the profession difficult to enter is one way of doing this. In Australia, however, the threshold for entry into the profession varies depending on the university. Former New Zealand Professor of Education, John Hattie, who now directs the Melbourne Education Research Institute, explained that in Queensland 1,500 new primary teachers graduate each year for 54 available jobs.

So why such an abundance? Supply of teachers is not matched to demand, and therefore, there are no caps on the number of positions available on courses. Many universities see teacher training as a ‘cash cow’, hence incentive to enroll large numbers of students without considering the number of jobs available.

Capping the positions available in teacher training programmes is one mechanism for raising the bar for entry, thus attracting the best people. Sacking the bottom 5% of teachers is dealing with quality control issues far too late. If the federal government is concerned about the bottom 5% of teachers, it should be asking why the system allowed them to become teachers in the first place.

John Morris is the former Headmaster of Auckland Grammar School. John is working together with Rose Patterson on The New Zealand Initiative's research project on teacher quality.