Taking 27-year-olds and turning them into teachers is proving a big success for the University of Melbourne.
Field Rickards, dean of Melbourne's Graduate School of Education, will take his experiences of turning university study on its head to produce better teachers along to the first meeting of the teacher education ministerial advisory group on Monday.
When federal minister Christopher Pyne announced the group's review of teacher training he cited a union survey showing more than four in five new teachers didn't think their education had prepared them to deal with difficult parents and colleagues.
Almost three-quarters didn't feel adequately prepared for teaching students with disabilities, poor English skills or from indigenous families.
Professor Rickards is hearing a very different story from his graduates.
He overhauled the University of Melbourne's processes in 2008 so teaching is only offered at post-graduate level.
Two years after the change, an independent survey of the university's graduate teachers found nine in 10 felt they'd been well prepared for their new jobs.
Most surveys of Australian teachers and those in the US and UK find only about four in 10 feel they're well prepared, Prof Rickards told AAP.
His graduates are snapped up, principals rave about them and a rising number of students each year clamour to enter his courses.
Largely this is because Melbourne has transformed teaching studies into a clinical profession with a substantial practical component.
"Our old model - and I suspect the others are the same - was to a large extent an apprenticeship model where students learnt theory at university and were often parachuted into a school somewhere," Prof Rickards said.
"The mentor teacher has no idea what knowledge (the student teacher) already has and they're only going to be there for a short time so it's: `Let me help you prepare a lesson, you can deliver the lesson and we'll see how you manage that'."
Mr Pyne wants teacher training to be more practical, saying his instinct is the more time a teacher spends in the classroom learning how to teach kids, the better.
Melbourne now has partnerships with 46 schools where its student teachers spend two days a week right from the start of their training.
Student teachers learn to follow a clinical thinking model to work out what each child knows, what they'll need to learn next, how best to teach that and whether the child actually learnt the new ideas.
Prof Rickards says this approach strengthens the link between theory and practice.
"We're able to say: `Do you remember the work that Professor Hattie was talking about last week? Now let's look at it in practice'.
"We've introduced the sorts of things that exist in other clinical practice professions like speech pathology and psychology and medicine."
As well, he believes not taking immediate school leavers makes a difference.
The average age of student teachers starting Melbourne's courses is 27 years, with many having spent time working after finishing their undergraduate degree.
Their diverse backgrounds mean they approach the study differently and help each other learn.
"We've had people come back out of corporate law and say ... I now know I want to be a teacher," Prof Rickards says.
"It's a much easier decision to make at the age of 27 than it is at the age of 17."
NSW education minister Adrian Piccoli wants the new ministerial council to explore the idea of offering teaching only as postgraduate degrees, saying it would strengthen the profession.
Prof Rickards says his experiences have only been positive.
However, he wants to see evidence about the impact on school student outcomes and teacher retention before insisting on the "massive transformation" it would take for every university to make the change.
