Teacher's status in Australia

Abstract

Teachers are very concerned about the status of their occupation. This is evident from the opinions of teachers expressed in Teacher’s Journals and in educational literature. Teachers believe their occupation has a low status and that it ought to be higher. The opinions held by teachers about the status of their occupation generally agree with the opinions held by various “publics” in tests designed to measure the relative status of occupations. The tests reveal there is general agreement in placing occupations in such a scale, with the professional and higher business occupations at the top, the skilled trades and technical occupations in the middle group, and the semi-skilled and unskilled occupations on the lowest ranking. In respect of individuals in these occupations, the doctor has the highest rating, followed by the solicitor, the clergyman, the engineer and architect. Teachers come lower down on the scale, although the secondary school teacher appears higher on the list than primary teacher. Teacher’s ideas about the prestige rating of their occupation are fixed on the status of professions, particularly of medicine and law. Teachers want their occupation to be recognised as a profession because they believe that such recognition would result in individual teachers improving their social status, their position in society vis-a-vis other individuals.