$40,000 scholarships now available for ECTs commencing study in 2025 

Scholarships of up to $40,000 are now on offer for those who will commence early childhood teaching (ECT) degrees in 2025. 

The Commonwealth Teaching Scholarships Program is targeted at high-achieving school leavers, mid-career professionals, First Nations peoples, people with disability, people for whom English is an additional language or dialect and individuals from rural, regional and remote locations or from low socio-economic backgrounds, and includes a commitment to teach requirement which means recipients must be willing to commit to teach for four years (undergraduate) and two years (postgraduate) in government-run schools or early learning settings.

This is the second round of the program, which aims to deliver 5,000 scholarships over five years. 

The first round of the program was highly successful, with more than 3,000 applications received, and almost 1,000 scholarships awarded to initial teacher education students who commenced their studies in 2024.

“Being a teacher is the most important job in the world and we don’t have enough of them,” Minister for Education Jason Clare said.

“I want more young people to leap out of high school and want to become a teacher, rather than a lawyer or a banker, and I want more people in the middle of their careers to consider becoming teachers. That’s what these scholarships are all about.”

Scholarships of $40,000 each will be available for new undergraduate teaching students over four years and $20,000 for new postgraduate teaching students over two years.

To encourage more teachers to live and work in remote Australia, students completing their final year professional experience placements in these communities may receive an additional top-up payment of $2,000.

This also builds on the Government’s program to cut HECS-HELP debt for teachers in very remote areas. More information on the Commonwealth Teaching Scholarships Program, including information on the application process, is available here. 

Applications close on Monday, 13 January 2025 at 5pm AEDT.