At the commencement of each academic school year, all schools around the country set aside time for teacher and general staff professional development and training and for a plethora of meetings.

These ‘student free’ days are invariably designed to ensure that the school and the staff are ready for the return of the students on day one. This process is repeated, to a slightly lesser degree, at the start of each term or semester and sometimes at the end of the terms too.

These student free staff training and meeting days usually include:

• A welcome from the principal and other members of the school leadership team.
• Some form of service for schools that have a religious affiliation.
• Specific team meetings – for example, a planning or information session for all primary school staff, secondary school staff, boarding staff or curriculum teams.
• Other more formal professional learning sessions that need to be completed and may include:

1. • Induction processes for all new staff, volunteers (including governing body members), direct contact contractors (contractors who have face-to-face contact with students, such as peripatetic music staff) and regular relief staff.
   • Human resources procedures, such as in relation to anti-bullying, anti-harassment and social media use.
   • Operations training including about child safety, playground duty, complaints handling and report writing.
   • Workplace health and safety training in first aid, anaphylaxis, fire safety, evacuation procedures and COVID-19 protocols.
   • Student duty of care requirements including in relation to behaviour management, pastoral care and parent communication.
   • Training in the values and ethos of the school.
   • Curriculum-driven training such as literacy or numeracy updates in primary schools or subject-specific training updates in secondary schools.
   • System wide training for systemic schools

It is important to note that among all this professional learning, some of it is in fact mandated, and schools are required to show compliance with either Commonwealth or state legislation requirements, including school and teacher registration requirements.

Australia-Wide Training Requirements

When we investigated the plethora of legislation and regulation that impacts on schools, we identified the following training requirements that are similar across all jurisdictions. In fact, most schools would consider these to be an absolute minimum within their induction programs and many provide training in these areas on an annual basis for all staff, to deliver ‘best practice’ and to ensure that both positive cultural change and compliance is achieved.

Child Safety

It goes without saying that training in child safety is an imperative for all schools around Australia. Child safety is mandated training in each state and territory for people who work with or around children and, in the school context, usually applies to governing body members, staff, and volunteers and contractors who have direct contact with children. In striving to be child safe organisations, schools should invest in child safety training regularly throughout the year, rather than only addressing it once, and should consider how this training is provided to volunteers and/or contractors.

Each state and territory have specific requirements in respect of the content for child safety training. However, generally speaking, the following topics are most often required:

• definitions and identification of “child abuse” or “‘harm”
• instructing learners on how to recognise and respond to child safety incidents including “child abuse” or “harm”
• meeting external reporting obligations including mandatory reporting
• the school’s Child Safe Code/s of Conduct and Professional Boundaries policies.

Workplace Health and Safety

Legislation in all states and territories requires employers to take all reasonably practicable measures to eliminate or minimise the risk of harm arising from the workplace, and this specifically includes organisations training their staff in workplace safety. In a school context, staff must be provided with sufficient training to ensure that they can carry out their duties safely. This means providing workplace safety training at induction and providing ongoing training to minimise the risk of workplace incidents and injuries.

In most jurisdictions, the following topics meet mandatory requirements and should be addressed:

• workplace induction both general and specific to the duties of the individual employee
• consultation on workplace safety including how to identify and report hazards and raise issues and concerns
• safe work procedures such as manual handling and electrical safety
• the use of personal protective equipment (PPE)
• how to report workplace injuries, illnesses and other safety incidents
• emergency procedures (for example, fire and storm safety, evacuations, lockdown and first aid)
• what happens if a worker is injured at work.

Each state or territory’s workplace safety regulator such as WorkSafe WA or Worksafe Queensland, as well as the respective Departments of Education, will be able to provide further information and resources regarding workplace safety.

Privacy

It is important that schools and their staff understand their requirements under the Australian Privacy Principles (APP) as they relate to the personal information and health information and how it is collected, used, protected and disclosed by the school. While the legislation doesn’t stipulate a training requirement, a school is likely not to comply with the Privacy Act if staff are not trained in their obligations.

Key elements which should be delivered in training include:

• how personal information can be collected by the school
• which information can and can’t be disclosed and under which circumstances
• the school’s Privacy Policy
• the subsequent protocols to protect the information of students, families, staff and the school
• rights of access and correction to an individual’s own personal information
• what is a notifiable data breach and when it must be reported to affected individuals and the privacy regulator.

The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) provides useful resources to support organisations in meeting their privacy obligations.

Early Childhood

If a school offers early childhood education, then depending on the year groups offered, they would be required to meet the requirements of the National Quality Framework, as regulated by the Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority (ACECQA).

ACECQA has set down designated training for early childhood providers and staff.

Jurisdiction-Specific Training Requirements

Some state or territory school registration bodies set down additional mandated training requirements for schools. Each state and territory teacher registration body also stipulates the types of training and hours that teachers must complete in order to maintain their registration.

In some cases, the Australia-wide training noted above may be included in these requirements, but some jurisdictions require a certain number of training hours to be focused on defined professional development or learning programs.

Australian Capital Territory

Teacher Requirements

Teachers must undertake a minimum of 20 hours of professional learning during each school year. Five hours of this training must be Teacher Quality Institute (TQI) Accredited programs and another five must be ‘teacher identified activities’ set down as minimum requirements. The professional learning must have “significant intellectual or professional content, be directly relevant to the content or practice of teaching and be relevant to the immediate or long-term professional development needs”.

First aid courses, workplace health and safety, other administrative training and school management and planning days, such as moderation days, cannot be counted towards the required 20 hours.

New South Wales

Teacher Requirements

Teachers must complete a minimum of 100 hours of professional development hours in a five year period as regulated by the NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA). This training is broken down into NESA approved training (depending on each career stage), which is required to meet the NESA Accredited PD Priority Areas and Elective Professional Development as follows:

• for Proficient Teachers: a minimum of 50 hours of NESA Accredited Professional Development across all priority areas; or
• for Highly Accomplished or Lead Teachers: a minimum of 20 hours of NESA Accredited Professional Development across all priority areas and 20 hours of professional commitment activities.

The balance of the 100 hours can be any combination of NESA Accredited Professional Development or Elective Professional Development, including professional commitment activities.

The Australia-wide training provided in this article is often provided to staff in order to comply with the Elective Professional Development requirements.

Board Member Requirements

School governing body members and the principal must complete 12 hours every three years of Professional Learning of Responsible Persons. Courses and the course provider must be a NESA approved training provider. In some cases, some of the topics mentioned in this article may have accreditation status, but again this is based on whether the learning provider has been accredited to deliver the topic in a governance context.

Boarding School Requirements

If a school offers a boarding program, then all boarding supervisors must be trained in first aid.

Northern Territory

Teacher Professional Training Requirements

The Teacher Registration Board (TRB) requires teachers to complete a minimum of 100 hours of professional development over a five-year period. An authorised person (a person who has been approved to teach in accordance with the Teacher Registration Act despite not being a fully qualified teacher) must complete 20 hours per year.

The Professional Development Framework provides guidance for teachers regarding what type of professional development contributes to their minimum hours but does not provide a specific list of mandatory topics.

Queensland

Teacher Professional Training Requirements

Queensland College of Teachers (QCT) requires fully-registered teachers to complete a minimum of 20 hours per year for any year in which they teach for 20 days or more.

According to the Continuing Professional Development Policy and Framework, the types of training should demonstrate a balance between employer/school-directed professional development and teacher-identified development and must be differentiated from activities that are normal expectations of the teacher’s role. This includes engagement in extra-curricular activities and participation in routine staff planning and preparation meetings.

South Australia

Teacher Requirements

The Teacher Registration Board of South Australia requires registered teachers to complete a minimum of 100 hours of Professional Learning every five years.

All professional learning claimed for registration purposes is required to be “over and above the normal roles and responsibilities as teacher such as preparing, planning, programming, assessing and reporting”, “referenced against” the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers and recorded regularly on the Teachers Portal with supporting evidence retained to verify that the learning has occurred.

Tasmania

Teacher Requirements

The Teacher Registration Board Tasmania does not require any specified minimum hours of professional development. Teachers simply have to provide evidence that they have undertaken professional development.

The types of training are not mandated, but the Teacher Registration Board indicates that activities of professional development include anything that contributes to professional competence, directly or indirectly enhancing teaching and learning.

Victoria

Teacher Requirements

The Victorian Institute of Teaching (VIT) requires teachers to complete a minimum of 20 hours per year of professional learning that develops their professional knowledge and practice and can be used as evidence in meeting the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers.

Professional learning may include seminars, workshops, professional development day within the workplace, professional readings of journals/ research papers and collegiate meetings among other examples outlined by the VIT.

Western Australia

Teacher Requirements

A teacher registered with the Teacher Registration Board of Western Australia must complete a minimum of 100 hours of professional learning over a period of five years when fully registered. The professional learning undertaken must include both formal activities such as workshops and seminars and informal activities such as professional reading. This professional learning should be in addition to preparation, planning, programming, and assessment and reporting and align to Western Australia’s Professional Standards for Teachers.

Governing Body Members Training

The Department of Education’s Guide To The Registration Standards And Other Requirements For Non-Government Schools requires evidence of training opportunities offered to and undertaken by school governing body members. Topics to be addressed should include accountable and ethical decision-making, complaints handling, duty of care and protective behaviours with particular attention paid to the context of school boarding facilities where applicable.

Best Practice Training

It would be remiss not to include in this article, a discussion of each school’s duty of care obligations to their students (and community). In order to minimise foreseeable risks of harm and to provide a safe environment for all, the following training is likely to have long standing benefits:

• Anaphylaxis and Allergy Response
• Asthma Response
• How to comply with Disability Standards (to support the legal obligations of schools under the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (Cth))
• Mental Health Professional Development (such as Youth Mental Health First Aid Training)
• Managing Excursions
• Critical Incidents and Emergency Management.

Conclusion

In a recent School Governance article, we discussed that high-quality, continuous training or professional development is critical for keeping teachers’ skills and knowledge relevant.

It is also important to remember that teachers need to be trained in compliance issues: knowing what the right thing is to do by their students and school.

So, regardless of whether the professional development or training is mandatory/non-mandatory, school-specific/not school-specific, school leaders should strive to ensure that any training offered is informative, relevant and valuable. After all, it will be the students who will eventually benefit from having well-trained teachers in their schools.

Authors

Melissa Larsson

Melissa Larsson is the Learning Content Manager at CompliSpace. She has worked in education over the past 15 years, notably as a Head of House, Senior Business Teacher and Acting Deputy Principal.  She has advised on syllabus development and assessment in Queensland and is also a co-author of two textbooks and a student study guide for the Business for QCE series. She has worked with many CompliSpace clients as a Project Manager and Consultant, and has a strong understanding of the governance, risk, and compliance requirements for schools.

Craig D'cruz

With nearly 40 years of educational experience, Craig D’cruz is the Principal Consultant and Sector Lead - Education at CompliSpace. Craig provides direction on education matters including new products, program/module content and training. Previously Craig held the roles of Industrial Officer at the Association of Independent Schools of WA, he was the Principal of a K-12 non-government school, Deputy Principal of a systemic non-government school and he has had teaching and leadership experience in both the independent and Catholic school sectors. Craig currently sits on the board of a large non-government school and is a regular presenter on behalf of CompliSpace and other educational bodies on issues relating to school governance, school culture and leadership.