Context matters: rethinking graduate teacher readiness for hard-to-staff schools

Concerns about graduate teacher readiness have been a key focus of Australian government reviews over the past decade. However, the extent to which policy expectations align with the realities of teaching in ‘hard-to-staff’ schools remains unclear. This paper examines how principals from two schools that have traditionally grappled with staffing challenges define teacher readiness through context-specific qualities such as local knowledge, community engagement, adaptability, and resilience. These attributes, considered crucial by the principals for success in their unique environments, do not easily align with the current Initial Teacher Education (ITE) policy framework, which aims to produce a ‘standardised workforce’. We argue that the current policy-driven push, anchored in a techno-rational view of the professional teacher, seeks to simplify a more complex reality to make it legible within the state’s system of administrative control. However, this policy vision for legibility and simplification neglects essential aspects of teaching shaped by the specific contexts of different schools. We conclude by addressing the implications for policy and how ITE programmes should better prepare teachers for diverse school settings.