Australian teacher legal action
We think it’s time to pull the reading wars out of the insulated walls of academia, and into the courtroom. If you agree, and you think your Education Degree wasn’t fit for purpose, add your name to our list!
You can register your interest in legal action pursuing universities for providing a product (a degree course) that you think isn’t fit-for-purpose. Alongside financial losses, we’re also interested in understanding the emotional toll on teachers due to not having the necessary skills.
Note there is no action currently underway (that we’re aware of) – we are simply canvassing interest as we continue our discussions with lawyers.
Take my details !Background:
The TEEP Review (“Scott Review”) into ITE (Initial Teacher Education) has resulted in mandated core content in ITE training from the end of 2025.
We’re not confident this is going to be effective, for a number of reasons:
- We’ve seen plenty of cognitive science ‘window dressing’ of edu-psych-babble, and explicit instruction ‘window dressing’ of inquiry approaches in the past. This has not led to meaningful change.
- A number of education academics have launched attacks on AERO in the last year and they’re not laying off (e.g. here, here, here, and here) and we’re being told that publications such as this ‘anti-evidence-based’ report have been doing the rounds amongst those with influence in ITE. It’s clear there are some quarters where folks are trying to make the reading wars more protracted.
- Given the intergenerational dearth of knowledge around the cognitive science of how learning and literacy acquisition best happens, we have to query whether universities even have enough suitably knowledgeable academics to be able to roll out courses rich in this subject matter. If not, what are they actually going to teach?
We also think – while it’s great that core content is now mandated – this mandate clearly demonstrates it was both necessary and lacking in the past.
If you’re keen for us to continue pursuing this line of enquiry, please add your details here:
Take my details !