Got the personality? Unis broaden undergraduate teaching entry measures

Want to become a teacher? NSW uni students will have to pass new requirements and show they have the qualities required to influence young minds.

Many universities will set personality tests and interview students to weed out candidates unsuited to the profession.

But most unis will also monitor students on their non-academic performance right through a degree to make sure they've got what it takes to run a classroom. So what will unis look for?

"Resilience, courage, endurance, compassion, self-sacrifice: all the important characteristics that are going to make a good teacher, you can't possibly uncover in a psychometric test, which is why we interview every teacher candidate," says Professor Marguerite Maher, Dean of Education at the University of Notre Dame, Sydney.

The university interviews an average of 700 students for about 350 places a year. The interviews delve into the personal statement each student must submit to Notre Dame as part of their application to enrol. Volunteering is well-regarded if it's genuine, Maher says. "We're looking for more sustained evidence than a once-off Meals-on-Wheels delivery ... We want people who are involved regularly in activities like coaching netball, who are interested in children, who show commitment."

Maher says that holding down a part-time job in high school can also show the persistence and work ethic that's important for teaching.

There's no hard and fast criteria for the "non-academic" entry components although the NSW Board of Studies Teaching and Educational Standards (BOSTES) is looking at those measures that ensure students applying to study teaching at uni have the expected non-academic characteristics. Universities need to make their selection criteria publicly available and make sure it relates to subsequent success in professional teaching practice.

Professor Michele Simons, Dean of Education at Western Sydney University, says the BOSTES reforms are not huge changes for most universities.

"All initial teacher education providers would say they are developing the dispositions and capabilities of their students preparing to be teachers; the BOSTES reforms make these efforts more transparent and overt," Simons says. "Assessing characteristics like resiliency, organisational and planning capacities, communication skills and the ability to cope with the physical and emotional demands of teaching is not a straightforward task," she says. "Universities will make choices about how they will do that and will make these decisions transparent as part of their accreditation processes and when they promote their courses to prospective students."

She says some universities may use a mix of psychometric tests, interviews and responses to case studies. WSU plans to use scenario-based questions for teacher candidates at post-graduate level.

"These capacities are not fixed in time, so we assess student teachers at the beginning of their time in teacher education for their readiness and initial capacities they bring to their studies to become a teacher, to establish some benchmarks, because the development of these capacities occurs not just over the time of their degree but over their career."

Students must achieve three Band 5s in their HSC to be accepted into university teaching, or study a bridging course benchmarked to a Band 5 HSC result, achieve a pass in the first year of an undergraduate degree in their intended teaching subjects or seek an alternative entry approved by BOSTES.

The Band 5 regulation does not apply to double teaching degrees such as a bachelor of education–bachelor of science: the second degree is assumed to take the place of the Band 5 requirements at most major universities. With  graduate numbers growing by 43 per cent in the 10 years to 2014 and a waiting list of 47,000 qualified teachers  seeking jobs in NSW, new teachers will face a tough employment market. And new standards. BOSTES president Tom Alegounarias says there will be a "rigorous accreditation process for teaching degrees".

Prospective teaching graduates have to pass the National Literacy and Numeracy Test before graduating. Some universities test part-way through the degree.