Curriculum

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Publications
What Do Parents Want From Schools?
Glenn Fahey
20 November 2019 | PP26

Educational freedom and proper use of resources are both crucial in producing the best outcomes for school students. This paper provides an insight into parental perspectives of the current state of school choice and resourcing. The research results reveal the areas of importance to parents…

Overcoming the Odds 2: Where are the top-performing disadvantaged secondary schools?
Blaise Joseph
23 July 2019 | PP21

Students from disadvantaged social backgrounds perform worse academically on average than more advantaged students. However, some students and schools from lower socio-economic backgrounds are successful. Only 3 Australian secondary schools are both disadvantaged and high-achieving. In contrast, 21 Australian primary schools are both disadvantaged and…

Overcoming the Odds: A study of Australia’s top-performing disadvantaged schools
Blaise Joseph
18 March 2019 | RR39

Students from disadvantaged social backgrounds perform worse on average academically than more advantaged students. This study investigated Australia’s top-performing disadvantaged schools in terms of literacy and numeracy results, with the aim of finding any common policies and practices which have led to their success. Nine…

Reading Recovery: A Failed Investment
Jennifer Buckingham
07 February 2019 | PP15

Five from Five is now a community education project supported by MultiLit, a reading program developer and publisher. Reading Recovery is an early intervention program for students in Year 1 who are having difficulty learning to read. It is widely used in Australia, the USA,…

What the Gonski 2 Review got wrong
Jennifer Buckingham, Blaise Joseph
17 June 2018 | PP6

The Gonski 2 Review into Australian schools failed to fulfill its terms of reference to examine the evidence regarding the most effective teaching and learning strategies, and to provide advice on how the extra federal government funding for schools should be used to improve student…

Media & Commentary
Paying best teachers to perform will help lift education outcomes
Glenn Fahey
06 September 2020 | Financial Review

Australia’s education unions continue to demand yet more funding, rather than provide solutions to improve the performance of the teaching workforce and to lift our educational outcomes.An “independent” review into…

Don’t expel school accountability
Glenn Fahey
27 August 2020 | Ideas@theCentre

This year’s abandonment of NAPLAN could inflict an enduring blow to school accountability. The literacy and numeracy tests — normally conducted in mid-May — were scrapped amid the pandemic uncertainty.…

Will generation lockdown write good history?
Fiona Mueller
18 August 2020 | Spectator

Twenty-first century history is being made each day. The news is full of statue-toppling anarchists and clueless looters, politicians making life and death decisions on COVID-19, increasing cybercrime and human rights abuses, loss…

NSW curriculum review is a fail
Blaise Joseph
03 July 2020 | Ideas@theCentre

Despite the Berejiklian government’s  ‘back to basics’ rhetoric, the NSW curriculum review is proposing a radical overhaul that isn’t based on evidence, but will make life more difficult for teachers…

Education reviews are booming. Shame the same can’t be said about school standards
Blaise Joseph
25 June 2020 | Spectator

Don’t be fooled by the “back to basics” language from the Berejiklian government — in reality, this NSW curriculum review also contains wishy-washy educational progressivism at its worst.  We’ve all had enough…

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