Study early childhood, primary, or secondary education at Lake Macquarie Campus

Avondale's teaching degree is rated as Australia’s #1 teaching course for learner engagement and #1 for teaching quality — The Good Universities Guide 2024.

Our teaching courses give you the practical experience, skills and access to networks you need to teach in schools in Australia and overseas. Choose from three sectors (Early Childhood, Primary and Secondary) to specialise in your preferred area of teaching.

Avondale offers a range of undergraduate teaching degrees, both standalone and combined with other Avondale courses. Studying teaching at Avondale will equip you with the practical experience and skills needed to teach in Christian, independent and state early childhood, primary and high school systems, both within Australia and overseas.

What makes Avondale’s teaching degrees practical is that you will engage in classroom experiences from your second year of full time study. These are undertaken in a variety of relevant learning environments to enable the application of theory in a practical setting.

Avondale offers a range of postgraduate research and study options, including a Master of Education (MEd), as well as the internationally-recognised Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) and Master of Philosophy (MPhil).

→ Learn more about our postgraduate courses

To meet the non-academic requirements of initial teacher education courses, you are required to write up to 1,000 words under four specific categories (approximately 250 words per section). The majority of categories are based on the key capabilities outlined in the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) competencies. Complete and submit your Personal Statement for Initial Teacher Education Courses (PSITE).

The Australian Government has introduced a National Literacy and Numeracy Test that Initial Teacher Education (ITE) students will be required pass. (This includes Master of Teaching students though does not apply at this stage to the Bachelor of Education (Early Childhood)(Birth – 5 Years) Course).

The TPA is conducted within the final professional experience placement of all Education degrees. The TPA reflects the elements of planning, teaching, assessing and reflecting. Each section is equally weighted (25%) and is deemed to be reflective of classroom teaching practice. The TPA assesses 31* out of 37* of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers at Graduate level (*depending on context) which have been mapped across tasks within each section of the TPA.

Each of the TPA tasks will be graded as Exceeds Expectations, Demonstrated or Not Demonstrated except for the lesson observation in the Teaching section which is graded by the Tertiary Supervisor as Satisfactory or Unsatisfactory. Each section of the TPA must be passed for TES to meet the criteria for passing the TPA. The TPA will be graded overall as either a Pass (Satisfactory) or Fail (Unsatisfactory).

All Teacher Education Students must successfully complete the TPA as a requirement for graduation.