They are the people we trust to educate our children, but are our teachers smart enough?

On one side of the debate is Labor’s education spokeswoman Tanya Plibersek. She thinks standards should be higher and wants to talk about ways to get smarter kids to study teaching at university.

And the numbers are on her side – high school marks for prospective teaching students have declined over the past 10 years.

But on the other side of the debate, universities and students say teaching is about more than just academic prowess.

What the numbers say

When students finish year 12 they are given what is called an ATAR score, a mark out of 100. The average score is 70. But the system is different in Queensland, where graduates are still ranked with an OP score.

The number of teaching students who scored an ATAR lower than 70 has surged over the past decade, going from 25 per cent in 2006 to 42 per cent in 2015.

Here’s a more detailed look at how teaching students stack up according to their ATAR score.

ATAR scores of teaching students. Photo: ABC

Ms Plibersek argues increasing the entrance scores required for teaching courses will attract brighter students and make the profession more prestigious.

“I’d like to see students competing to get into teaching courses in the same way they compete to get into medicine,” Ms Plibersek said.

“I’d like to see teaching the first choice for high-performing students and not a fall-back. In some countries around the world, if you miss out on teaching you can still get into law.”

She says a high ATAR score is not the only quality that makes a good teacher, but thinks the trend to take students with lower marks has consequences.

“I completely agree that it’s more than just marks, I really do. I just don’t know how you can sustain an argument that says it’s OK for us to be taking people with lower and lower marks every year.”

Literacy and numeracy results are up

Teaching students already have to do a literacy and numeracy test before they graduate their university course to make sure they are in the top 30 per cent of Australians.

Back in 2015 when the test was in the pilot stage, around one in 10 teaching students failed.

The latest results show test scores have improved and now only one in 20 are failing to make the grade.

Ms Plibersek thinks the test could become a prerequisite for entry into a teaching course instead.

Universities say teaching is not all about the ATAR

The Australian Council of Deans of Education (ACDE) is the peak body representing the people who run education courses at our universities.

Professor Tania Aspland, from Australian Catholic University, is the group’s president and disagrees with the push to lift ATAR scores.

“Politicians tinker with things like ATAR to grandstand and it really doesn’t make a good contribution to building the profession,” she says.

“It is only one measure of a student’s potential to become a great teacher. In fact there is no empirical evidence that shows a high ATAR makes a good teacher, there is none whatsoever.”

She says non-academic traits such as compassion and humour are equally as important.

“What I want entering the teaching profession is people who connect with young Australians and take them forward in their learning. They can be very bright in mathematics and hopeless communicators.”

Professor Aspland also points to the fact that only around a third of teaching students are secondary school leavers.

Here’s a breakdown of the different backgrounds of people studying to be teachers.

Education Minister Simon Birmingham says looking at ATAR scores alone is a crude measure and you need to focus on the person who graduates at the end of the course.

“The most important output is of course the graduate from the university, and having confidence that the graduate is competent and skilled and proficient to go into the classroom, not the skills of the kid who starts at university,” Senator Birmingham said.

“We also want to make sure that people who go into the teaching profession have the right skills, traits, empathy to be able to inspire and develop the skills in young Australians.”

– ABC