"It's a rare person who is ready for this," Ms Kopp said.

"To be a first- or second-year teacher and not just survive but actually succeed in putting kids on a path to greater opportunity is a very tall order."

Australian counterpart also selective

The American program has its counterpart in Australia, which is also highly selective.

The six-year-old Teach for Australia program took only 67 graduates out of the 1300 who applied last year, a selection rate of only 5 per cent.

In both countries successful applicants are given a summer's worth of preparation and then fast-tracked into real teaching jobs, usually in schools in poor or remote areas where teaching is challenging.

They commit to spending two years teaching, and while they do so they study for a formal teaching qualification.

Many of them end up staying in teaching. Wendy Kopp, a New Yorker who founded Teach for America in 1990, said 65 per cent of the 40,000 alumni of the program have remained in jobs related to education, and about half of these (37 per cent) are still teachers.


"Teaching successfully in our highest-need communities is so transformational for the teachers themselves, they never leave the work," said Ms Kopp, now chair of Teach for America, and CEO of Teach for All, an umbrella group of organisations in 36 countries (including Teach for Australia) that run similar programs.

"[The graduates] fall in love with their kids, they become outraged by what the kids are up against and they just commit themselves to it long term."

"Half of the school principals in New Orleans are Teach for America alumni, and a third of the teachers and the state commissioner for education," Ms Kopp said.

Something 'more meaningful, challenging'

The Australian program (which unlike the US program operates only in high schools) started six years ago, first in Victoria, then spreading to the Northern Territory and the ACT and this year starting in Western Australia.

Currently there are 110 graduates who are teaching in the Teach for Australia program.

The graduates, known as associates, work four days out of five and the other day is for them to study toward a master's degree in education, which they do by distance education from Deakin University. When they have completed the two years they commit to Teach for Australia, they will be qualified with a teaching degree.


Associate Nick Spinks, in his second year of teaching at Ararat Secondary College in regional Victoria, has an arts-law degree from the University of Queensland and worked as a lawyer and in television production for four years before beginning teaching. Although still an associate, Mr Spinks is now head of the arts department in his school, as well as year 10 co-ordinator.

He joined because he wanted to do something "more meaningful and challenging" and said he will definitely stay on when his two years is over.

"If it wasn't for Teach for Australia I doubt I would have have been a teacher," he said.

Both Teach for Australia and Teach for America say their key purpose is to bring the most promising future leaders into their programs.

"We are specifically trying to build individuals who are change-makers on the issue of inequity. Education is the best lever that we have," Teach for Australia CEO Melodie Potts Rosevear said.

Educational inequity a 'massive' problem

Ms Kopp said that in recruiting for Teach for America, they are looking for leadership characteristics: "people who set big goals for themselves and meet them despite the challenges and obstacles," she said.

"Educational inequity is a massive, very consequential and very complex problem. We think we should do what we do in any other realm when we face big problems – put our best people on it," she said.


She finds it frustrating that "in virtually every country in the world we send our best-educated recent college graduates, our most promising future leaders, to everything but expanding opportunity for the most marginalised of kids".

She said that Teach for America, and a similar program in Britain called Teach First, which has been running for 15 years, have worked to change that.

"Now these organisations are recruiting a solid share of the most highly sort after graduates and channelling their energy in this direction [to education]," Ms Kopp said.

"And while they commit two years, they never really leave the work because those two years are so transformational."

In the US, about 1000 of the 40,000 Teach for America alumni have become school principals.

Over 100 associates next year

Next year, Teach for Australia will recruit over 100 associates and this could expand to an intake of 200 or 250 a year. About 70 per cent of the approximately 180 Australian alumni are still in teaching and an increasing number are in leadership positions in schools.

"We have our first two assistant principals," Ms Potts Rosevear said.

Now Teach for Australia is trying to shift its funding base away from heavy reliance on government support. Last year the federal government gave it a $22 million grant, but it has recently received charitable status and wants to build up philanthropic support.

The big question and challenge is how to scale this. We need to reach the point where not just a few, but many, of Australia's most promising future leaders channel their energy in this direction," Ms Kopp said.

"I have seen in my own country the role that the philanthropic community and the business community have played in this. We need new partnerships with the private sector [in Australia] to build on that success."