About

Matching supply with demand is a perennial problem in workforce planning. This is particularly the case with respect to teachers, who constitute the largest professional group in Australia. Fluctuations in teacher demand have been well documented, as has the cyclic pattern of shortages and surpluses in supply. To date, however, attempts to predict future demand, and thus to match the provision of properly trained teachers with student enrollments, have been less than successful.

In adopting a systems approach, this study addresses interactions between the demand side and the supply side not taken into account in other work. In most studies which purport to address the supply and demand, the predictions are effectively linked to the demand (employer) side. An underlying assumption is that suppliers (universities and teacher education courses) should be able to provide the appropriate number of graduates, if only those numbers could be known ahead of time. The modeling process employed in this study exposes problematic elements of this assumption and explores the behavioural consequences of a variety of policies and system conditions with respect to setting and meeting targets. Implications for the management of the supply and demand problem are discussed in terms of the behaviour of the models under a range of policy options, considered separately and in combination.

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Reviews

Teacher supply and demand issues have challenged policy makers in education for decades. More than twenty years ago the 1978 Review -- Teacher Education in Queensland (the Bassett Report) called for the monitoring of projections of supply and demand in the light of developing situations. Almost a decade later, in its 1987 report Project 21: Teachers for the Twenty-First Century, the Board of Teacher Registration expressed concern over the implications of fluctuations in numbers of students graduating from pre-service teacher education programs.

In recent years, on behalf of its constituent bodies, the Board of Teacher Registration has continued to take a keen interest in the question of supply and demand, and to advocate regular review. Further work is clearly necessary -- in the face of widespread predictions of serious shortages of teachers, Board members recall having witnessed just a few years ago the anxiety of graduates about to enter a market characterised by a large surplus of teachers.

Professor Galbraith argues that understanding and management of supply and demand behaviour may be a more realistic goal than prediction. With this purpose in mind, he adopts a system dynamics approach to the problem, in which a model is designed to explore complex interactions among the many variables of both demand and supply. The model is centrally concerned with the inter-relationships identified as generic to the problem as it has appeared in many settings, and as such is not specific to any state context, nor dependent on the specifics of particular local data.

The system conditions and policies considered in the model include changes in resignation rates, attractiveness of teaching, progression rates through pre-service programs, pupil-teacher ratios, course length, and the time taken by graduates to obtain employment. He concludes that fluctuations in supply and demand variables should not be primarily attributed to external factors such as economic cycles, but are substantially a consequence of the decision structures of the supply-demand system itself. These structures are characterised by closed chains of cause and effect, which when compounded by delays in material and information flows make effective management a difficult proposition. The challenge is not so much to prepare to meet hypothetical levels of future demand, but to stabilise the rates of change, and to improve the system components responsible for the problem as we have come to know it.

Professor Galbraith's insights make an important contribution to the ongoing debate. His study provides a fresh perspective on this enduring problem and offers a new tool for policy analysis. It will be of interest to all who are concerned about teachers supply and demand issues -- employers, universities, and current and intending members of the teaching profession itself.

Dr Marie Jansen

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