Great education scholarships for postgrads

To help offset some of the postgraduate study costs, we’ve come up with a list of excellent scholarships you can apply for in education, including but not limited to:

• Early childhood education
• Higher education
• Primary teaching
• Secondary teaching
• Special education
• Teacher education
• Teacher librarianship

This makes them quite flexible.

If you’re intimidated by the prospect of scholarship applications, fear not! We’ve written a free, comprehensive guide to postgraduate scholarships and getting selected that you can reference throughout this article. If you’d rather not go elsewhere for now, here are just a couple tidbits from it that’ll help you understand some of the common terminology in relation to scholarship applications:

• There are three main types of scholarships.
  • Merit-based scholarships rely on some combination of grades, professional or extra-curricular achievements to succeed.
  • Need-based scholarships adopt their namesake in only being given to those of greatest need. This is commonly in the form of financial hardship, but can be in reference to coming from a disadvantaged background or having a disability.
  • Research-based scholarships are often discipline-specific endeavours that requires applicants to undergo research in a very particular area. For instance, it may require a student of commercial law to inspect obscure precedents and their application to modern commercial law.
• Written statements require a short blurb about yourself, with your achievements as supporting evidence rather than being centre stage.
• CVs or resumes put your achievements first in fairly terse language.
• Professional references are former bosses or professors.
• Personal references are family members, friends or community leaders, the latter being preferable.
• Academic transcripts are official or unofficial documents provided by your university. When an application asks for these if you haven’t yet finished undergrad, an unofficial transcript will normally do just fine.

Without further adieu, here are some great funding opportunities in education.

NSW DET 2018 Teacher Education Scholarship Program - $5,000 pa

These are scholarships offered by the NSW government to help students in teaching programs of any discipline. 80 of these are reserved especially for students of Aboriginal or Torres Strait descent and have no further entry or admission requirements. The sheer volume of these make them a highly worthwhile opportunity to apply for.

Master of Teaching Scholarship in Maths and Physics - $6,000 pa

Students from the University of Sydney studying secondary education specialising in mathematics or a science are eligible for this scholarship, provided they are Australian or New Zealand citizens or permanent residents. They must also have obtained their undergraduate degree from the University of Sydney.

Applicants need to provide a personal statement outlining academic achievements, work experience, leadership and communication skills. They also require a letter of reference from a source of their choosing.

At the time of writing, this scholarship was closed, but fear not! It reopens annually and is certainly worth keeping an eye on.

Incentive Scholarships - $3,500 + guaranteed teaching job

These are for final year teacher education students, with 40 available each year. They’re given out to future teachers specialising in the following disciplines:

• Mathematics
• Science (physics)
• Technological and applied studies
• Special education

You need to be an Australian citizen to be eligible. You also need to have applied to teach in NSW via the Graduate Recruitment Program (GRP) and be willing to work full time as a teacher in a location either of your choice or for a location where you’re most needed in NSW. To apply, fill out the GRP online form and you’ll be considered.

The following are all the locations you could be assigned to as part of this program if you choose to be assigned ‘anywhere’:

• Albury,
• Armidale,
• Bankstown,
• Batemans Bay,
• Bathurst,
• Blacktown,
• Bondi,
• Bourke,
• Broken Hill,
• Campbelltown,
• Central Coast,
• Clarence/Coffs Harbour,
• Deniliquin,
• Dubbo,
• Fairfield,
• Granville,
• Griffith,
• Hornsby,
• Lake Macquarie,
• Lismore,
• Liverpool,
• Maitland,
• Moree,
• Mount Druitt,
• Muswellbrook,
• Newcastle,
• Northern Beaches,
• Orange,
• Parramatta,
• Penrith,
• Port Jackson,
• Port Macquarie,
• Queanbeyan,
• Ryde,
• Shellharbour,
• St George,
• Sutherland,
• Tamworth,
• Taree,
• Tweed Heads/Ballina,
• Wagga Wagga,
• Windsor, and
• Wollongong.

The PostgradAustralia Scholarship - $2,750

Our very own scholarship is a great way of getting funded because its requirements are very easy to meet. You don’t need an astronomical GPA or sparkling CV. It doesn’t matter if you’re an international student or domestic. All we need are two things.

• A written statement describing your passion for education
• A social media post that creatively describes your passion. This can be a poem, picture, video or whatever else you can come up with!

For this reason, we think it’s definitely worth applying for. We really care about giving all postgrads a fair go at being funded.

Pearl Duncan Teaching Scholarship - $20,000

This scholarship is for Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander applicants who aspire to become teachers in a Queensland state school. It’s named after Queensland’s first Aboriginal educator, making it a great way to carry on Mrs Duncan’s legacy. Simply applying via the Queensland government’s site is all that’s required to get in the running.

Hopefully this has given you a better idea of what kind of scholarships are available for aspiring educators, but there are far more. Feel free to browse our directory of general postgraduate scholarships here. Make sure to have our guide to postgraduate scholarships at hand to give yourself the best chance at success. Good luck!