Teaching
Featured Publication
Confronting Indigenous educational disadvantage: A Kimberley perspective
Lorraine Hammond
24 March 2021 | AP20
The challenges of education in Australia’s remote majority indigenous communities are complex and persistent. The best intentions and considerable resourcing over decades haven’t translated into consistently higher quality instruction and unfortunately, not a significant improvement in broader education outcomes. This paper documents the challenges faced on the ground by educators…
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Dollars and Sense: Time for smart reform of Australian school funding
Glenn Fahey
01 December 2020 | RR40
Australia is among the world’s highest-spending countries on schooling. Yet, the educational return on this investment for parents, taxpayers, employers, and students, has deteriorated — despite the expectation of policymakers that increased funding would inevitably improve educational outcomes. It’s true that money matters when it…
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…
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…
Why We Need NAPLAN
Blaise Joseph
13 May 2018 | RR36
The National Assessment Plan – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) is a crucial national assessment, but is coming under increasing criticism. There are three major benefits of NAPLAN: Tool to improve schools and teaching. NAPLAN results enable the identification of problems in the school system over…
Media & Commentary
More than money to move the educational needle
Glenn Fahey
12 December 2020 | CANBERRA TIMES
New CIS research shows that sustained, record increases to school funding are not improving Australia’s education outcomes. This rubbishes the default approach of policymakers, who lean on ramping up funding…
Roll out the test that stops children failing at the first hurdle
Tom Switzer
11 December 2020 | SYDNEY MORNING HERALD
Little is more fundamental to the success of an individual than literacy. If our children do not develop the abilities to read, write, speak and listen properly, almost everything else…
CIS victory on phonics
Tom Switzer
05 December 2020 | CIS
Sinking scores, poor sentence construction, misspelling words. In recent years, the process of teaching school children to read and write has been such a disaster across the nation there was…
Professionalism to lift teaching status
Glenn Fahey
10 September 2020 | Ideas@theCentre
Lifting teaching’s status can be achieved through embracing — rather than obstructing — market-based reform. Australia’s education unions falsely blame alleged underfunding for the declining status of teaching, rather than…
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…