The proposed ESOS reforms, ostensibly about ‘quality and integrity,’ are paradoxically creating instability that threatens to drive away the talent essential to maintaining Australia’s reputation as a premier destination for international students. This talent also holds the skills to meet the needs of our linguistically and culturally diverse domestic student populations.
As a global teacher educator, I can attest: educators in our international education industry are world-class. Strategies to design, manage, and scaffold content for diverse learners, strategies that are only now emerging in mainstream education and learning design, have long been standard in ELICOS and pathway classrooms. One look at the program from the recent English Australia conference, and you’ll see that this sector isn’t just keeping pace pedagogically; it’s leading the way.
While the Universities Accord report recommends new teaching standards and professional development for academics in higher education, tactfully acknowledging the gap between subject expertise and teaching skills, VET and ELICOS providers already maintain legislated pedagogical standards: VET a Certificate IV in Training and Assessment and ELICOS a teaching certificate with 6 hours of observed practice. The ELICOS sector, in particular, has a well-established professional development system in The English Australia CPD framework, which recommends teachers maintain 20 CPD points a year.
In an increasingly competitive global education market, private providers place a strong emphasis on support services and teacher quality. They know a positive student experience and learner progression hinges on effective classroom engagement and academic support, and teacher quality and professional development are foundational to their business success.
Recent and proposed reforms suggest an assumption that all international students can enter directly into higher ed with a language proficiency certificate and do just fine. But this overlooks a crucial reality: many learners come without developing the skills needed to be successful in Australian higher ed and workplaces, like intercultural and communicative competence. Our pathway programs fill those gaps. Will our HE institutions be able to support these students when they are chronically underfunded and concerned about staff cuts too?
Thousands of staff have signed an NTEU petition calling on the federal government to guarantee university jobs. National President Dr. Alison Barnes states: “We know too many vice-chancellors’ instinctive reaction to any policy change is cutting the staff which deliver the world-class teaching and research that is the critical selling point for international students” and “job cuts at a time when universities have been chronically underfunded for a decade would be devastating for the government’s goal for 80 per cent of the population to have a tertiary qualification by 2050.”
We are already seeing academic job losses in private institutions. And anecdotal reports of university pathway educators receiving emails about uncertainty in their positions. Once these talented people leave the industry, it will be hard to bring them back, just as it was post-COVID.
So we must ask: can’t we strengthen through legislative reforms without creating an insecure and unstable employment environment? Without sacrificing the academic talent that has made our education system world-class?
Taking on industry pleas to pause legislative reforms for deeper consultation would be a good start.
