With in excess of 100,000 teacher’s aids and SLSO’s in schools across Australia and many keen to re-train and upskill, it’s innovative approaches like this that are proving invaluable in helping to address staff shortages.

The Grow Your Own Teacher Training (GYOTT) program and its extension, the Grow Your Own Local Teacher Pipeline (GYOLTP) program, began in 2023 and has just produced its first graduates.

So far 360 students have benefited from the NSW Government initiative, which provides up to $10,000 of funding per student, each year over three years, to be spent on anything that's required, be that university fees or technologies.

The pathway allows those with any previous diploma or a Cert 4 in a school-based education support, a year of credit – which means their degree is a three-year, full-time degree rather than a four-year commitment.

The initiative also accepts Aboriginal education officers, school admin officers, school admin managers and business managers, with 300 undergrads at present studying through Charles Sturt University and 60 at Western Sydney University.

Associate Professor Libbey Murray, from the Charles Sturt School of Education, says she and her team are ‘thrilled’ that the students’ hard work has paid off with them completing their degrees while working in school support roles, and now teaching in schools across regional NSW.

“By valuing their current contributions to the profession, allowing them to study online while continuing to work in schools, and supporting their skill development to become qualified teachers, we are seeing outstanding results in this area,” Murray says.

While the wraparound support provided by her team is hugely important, the academic says the success of the program is in no small part due to the financial assistance.

“I think the Grow Your Own Teacher Training students really feel well supported,” she tells EducationHQ.

Assoc Prof Murray, pictured above, says her Charles Sturt support team really meets GYOTT program students where they're at, working with them one-on-one.

“The financial support is really the thing that keeps them retained. We’ve got almost 95 per cent retention in this program, so there’s very little attrition.

“The knowledge that they’re going into a permanent job in the town where they’re living and want to live really helps as well.” 

Murray says the program's age range is from 21 to 70 with a median age of about 39.

Sharon Andrews, 54, is one of the first graduates, and has achieved a Bachelor of Education (Secondary).

“The GYO program was instrumental in helping me balance my studies with my work commitments,” Andrews says.

“It provided a flexible and supportive environment where I could develop my teaching skills while staying connected to my school community.”

Andrews has worked as a SLSO at a Dubbo school before and during her studies, and says when COVID hit and teacher shortages became more apparent, she knew taking that next step was the right decision for her.

“I realised how important it was to support students through such a difficult time,” she says.

“Starting something new later in life was daunting, but through perseverance and a commitment to education, I achieved what once felt out of reach.”

It’s well known that the ongoing teacher supply crisis should probably be more accurately be referred to as a ‘retention crisis’, with a plentiful influx of teachers entering the system being countered by even more educators exiting the profession.

Murray also leads the Collaborative Teacher’s Aid Pathway (CTAP) at Charles Sturt, an in-house program which at present includes 800 teachers aids or school support staff re-training to become teachers.

She says programs such as CTAP and funding initiatives like GYOTT and GYOLTP are far more likely to result in prolonged retention.

“A few years ago we were thinking ‘how are we going to get a retainable cohort of teachers who know what they’re in for, who don’t just think that they love working with kids because they have some nephews, that kind of thing, who are these people?’

“It wasn’t always working to get accountants retrained as maths teachers, for example, or people who are working in science organisations or as writers to become teachers.” 

Murray says it can prove ‘really tricky’ to bridge the gap from working in an office environment every day to entering a bustling, dynamic classroom.

“It’s such a cultural difference in the type of work that you do and the environment that you work in,” she says.

“So for those people who really know what they’re getting themselves in for, it’s a great profession.

“They know the rewards and they know that the hard work and the time consuming hours and the reporting and the writing up of everything that you’re doing – all that kind of thing – they know that that’s important and they know how rewarding it is when they see children learning and children growing.”

All 360 of the GYOTT cohort has worked for at least two years in schools and are acutely aware of the demands of the job.

“In those final placements, when they (ITE students) have applied for conditional accreditation or conditional approval to teach – that can be a real baptism of fire in a way, or a real juncture point, where we see students go through their whole degree and they get to their final placement they go, ‘oh my gosh this isn’t for me, it’s so much work, it’s just it’s too much to manage’.

“Whereas our GYOTT students, the only thing that can be tough to manage is that they’re trying to juggle their own student in Year 12 at the same time as they’re doing their final placement, or their young children … or maybe finances.

“They find the profession less scary or less challenging, it’s just trying to juggle all the other things in their life...”

Unfortunately, NSW Government funding for the GYOTT program is not being renewed for now, although the 360 current participants will benefit for the duration of their studies.

“Charles Sturt University is keen to continue our successful partnership with the NSW Department of Education in future projects,” Murray says.

“[For now, though] this is just the start of many more wonderful GYO graduates who will complete their teaching degrees over the next few years, and we can’t wait to support each of their individual journeys toward such a rewarding career.”