Standards

The Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (APST) are designed to clarify the knowledge, practice and professional engagement required for teachers – they also provide a common language for teachers, teacher educators / organisations, professional associations and the public.

The standards are used by all teachers in Australia and, in Victoria, underpin the requirements for:

accreditation of initial teacher education programs
teacher registration
annual renewal.

You will use and demonstrate the standards when you have (full) registration, and undertake an annual renewal process to maintain the standards at the Proficient Teacher level.

Career stages

The Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (PDF, 632.54 KB) are organised into four career stages designed to reflect the continuum of the development of your expertise as a teacher:

Graduate Teacher
Proficient Teacher
Highly Accomplished Teacher
Lead Teacher

We have adopted the Graduate and Proficient career stages for teacher registration and annual renewal. Although we don't adopt the Highly Accomplished and Lead career stages, individual jurisdictions may choose to use these as a guide with schools.

Read more about moving from provisional to (full) registration.

Read more about renewing your registration.

Australian Professional Standards for Teachers

Domain	Standard
PROFESSIONAL KNOWLEDGE	1. Know learners and how they learn 2. Know the content and how to teach it
PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE	3. Plan for and implement effective teaching and learning 4. Create and maintain supportive and safe learning environments 5. Assess, provide feedback and report on learning
PROFESSIONAL ENGAGEMENT	6. Engage in professional learning 7. Engage professionally with colleagues, parents / carers and community