Public school teaching applications in Australia are usually assessed against the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers, and panels want evidence you can apply those standards in a real classroom — not just describe your teaching philosophy. Strong responses reference an actual class, a specific group of students, or a real curriculum challenge, rather than staying at the level of general educational theory.
| Typical Criterion | What Panels Are Looking For |
|---|---|
| Know students and how they learn | An example of adjusting your teaching for a student or group with different learning needs, not just acknowledging that students learn differently. |
| Plan and implement effective teaching and learning | A specific unit or lesson sequence you designed, including how you knew it worked (assessment data, student engagement, or outcomes). |
| Create and maintain supportive, safe learning environments | Handling a behavioural or classroom management challenge, and how your approach supported the whole class, not just the individual student involved. |
| Engage professionally with colleagues, parents/carers, and the community | A difficult or important conversation with a parent, carer, or colleague, and how you managed it professionally. |
Criterion: "Know students and how they learn"
In a Year 8 English class, one student was consistently disengaged during independent reading tasks and falling behind, despite showing strong verbal comprehension when we discussed texts as a class.
I needed to find out whether the issue was the reading task itself or something else, and adjust my approach so the student could access the same learning outcomes.
I spoke with the student one-on-one to understand the barrier, which turned out to be difficulty with sustained silent reading rather than comprehension, and introduced audiobook versions of set texts alongside the print copies for the whole class, framing it as a choice available to everyone rather than a singled-out accommodation.
The student's engagement and assessment results improved significantly over the term, three other students also chose to use the audiobook option, and I've kept offering that choice in every class since.
Criterion: "Create and maintain supportive, safe learning environments"
A Year 10 class I taught had ongoing low-level disruption from a small group of students, which was affecting the ability of the rest of the class to concentrate during practical activities.
I needed to address the behaviour without damaging my relationship with the students involved or singling them out publicly in front of their peers.
I reset the seating plan for the whole class under the framing of "fresh starts for term two" rather than as a punishment, built in more structured, timed activities to reduce idle moments where disruption tended to start, and spoke privately with the group about my expectations and what support they needed to meet them.
On-task behaviour improved noticeably within two weeks, no formal behaviour referrals were needed for that group for the rest of the term, and the head of department asked me to share the seating and activity-structuring approach at a faculty meeting.
Use these as a guide for structure and depth — your own response should be built from your own situation, task, action, and result.
Most Australian education departments ask for a statement addressing the professional standards within a set number of pages (commonly two to four pages total, not per criterion) rather than strict per-criterion word counts — but always check the specific department's application guide, since NSW, VIC, QLD, and other states each have slightly different formats and terminology.
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Write My Response — FreeBrowse All ExamplesCommon questions about Teacher selection criteria.