The Origin Foundation has received a national award for philanthropy in education, taking out the ‘Outstanding Philanthropic Support for Higher Education’ category at the Business Higher Education Round Table Awards. The award was received in recognition of Origin’s funding for the national rollout of QUT’s Exceptional Teachers for Disadvantaged Schools Program, which SVA helped support.

Now called National Exceptional Teachers for Disadvantaged Schools (NETDS), the program is designed to provide a pathway for the highest achieving pre-service teachers to be fully prepared for, and committed to, roles within low socio-economic status (SES) schools. The program is set up to deal with the fact that while within the education system the most important lever to improve outcomes for disadvantaged students is outstanding teachers, kids who need great teachers the most are the least likely to get them and keep them. Teacher graduates in the top quartile of academic test scores are far less likely to accept positions in low SES schools and because they can be challenging environments, these teachers are retained for much shorter periods of time.

NETDS tackles this by identifying the best performing teaching students with the knowledge, skills, disposition, life experiences, and willingness to teach in low SES schools, and then modifying the curriculum and providing practicum opportunities to focus on understanding and being equipped to deal with contexts of disadvantage.

The Origin Foundation’s strategic funding commitment will enable NETDS to be rolled out in six more Australian Universities, with the target of preparing more than 200 outstanding teaching graduates each year to go and work in disadvantaged schools.

SVA’s Executive Director of Education Suzie Riddell commented:

“We are delighted that the Origin Foundation has been recognised for their support of NETDS, which is one of the most promising approaches to addressing educational disadvantage we’ve seen in Australia. The award is a great testament to the power of strategic philanthropy to in creating significant and measurable change in our community.”