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Paul Weldon is a Senior Research Fellow with the Australian Council for Educational Research. He works on multiple different educational research programs and is commonly involved in program evaluation and the design, delivery and analysis of surveys. Through his work on the Staff in Australia’s Schools (SiAS) surveys in 2010 and 2013, Paul developed a particular interest in the teacher workforce. He was the lead writer of the most recent Victorian Teacher Supply and Demand Report, and led the recent AEU Victoria workload survey.
In this episode we talk to Paul about his two papers, The Teacher workforce in Australia: Supply, demand and data issues and Out-of-field teaching in Australian secondary schools. This episode's discussion includes an in-depth examination of the ’30% of teachers leave with in the first 3 years and 50% within the first 5’ that’s often quoted in relation to retention of early career teachers, the landscape of teacher supply and demand out to 2020, as well as what the distribution of out of field teaching in Australia says about how we value our out of field teachers.
Links mentioned in the podcast:
Australian Policy Online. ‘a research database and alert service providing free access to full text research reports and papers, statistics and other resources essential for public policy development and implementation in Australia, New Zealand and beyond.'.