School Education
28 June 2020
The Recovery Book: what Australian governments should do now
To help Australia recover from the COVID-19 recession, the Government should inject $70 billion to $90 billion in extra economic stimulus, including revamping and extending JobKeeper.
14 June 2020
COVID catch-up: helping disadvantaged students close the equity gap
Australia should launch a $1 billion, six-month tutoring blitz to help 1 million disadvantaged school students recover learning lost during the COVID-19 lockdowns.
9 February 2020
Top teachers: sharing expertise to improve teaching
A new career path for expert teachers could boost student learning by 18 months by age 15. Australian students’ performance is falling in international tests. Here’s how we can better use our best teachers to improve teaching.
25 August 2019
Attracting high achievers to teaching
Top teachers should be able to earn $80,000 a year more, and top school-leavers should get $10,000-a-year scholarships if they take up teaching, as part of a $1.6 billion reform package to boost teacher quality and student performance.
16 April 2019
Commonwealth Orange Book 2019: Policy priorities for the federal government
The winner of the 2019 federal election should defy the national mood of reform fatigue and stare down vested interests to pursue a targeted agenda to improve the lives of Australians. The Orange Book charts the policy priorities.
28 October 2018
State Orange Book 2018: Policy priorities for states and territories
State and territory governments can do more to improve the lives of Australians. In many cases, states are different because their governments adopted better policies. Every state should learn from the others and do better.
22 October 2018
Measuring student progress: A state-by-state report card
Our new report card on NAPLAN results reveals big differences between the states on students’ learning progress through school. Governments should investigate why students make more progress in some states, to identify teacher practices and school policies that produce the best results.
11 February 2018
The Commonwealth’s role in improving schools
The Commonwealth should not use the extra money it is spending on schools as an excuse to intervene in school education. The danger is that the ‘Gonski 2.0 Review’ could be used as a platform for Commonwealth interventions that sound good, but don’t actually help on the ground.
26 November 2017
Towards an adaptive education system in Australia
Australia’s school education system is not fit for purpose, and we need to rethink the way we teach students, support teachers and run schools. To halt the decline, we should make the system more adaptive.
5 February 2017
Engaging students: creating classrooms that improve learning
Forty per cent of Australian school students are unproductive in a given year. The education system needs comprehensive reform to tackle widespread student disengagement in class.