Teaching
Featured Publication
Writing matters: reversing a legacy of policy failure in Australian education
Deidre Clary, Fiona Mueller
28 July 2021 | AP23
Since the middle of last century, Australian education has seen the adoption, variable implementation and occasional jettisoning of a parade of methodologies including learning styles, multiple intelligences, critical literacy, constructivism, whole language, process writing, genre theory and text types, balanced literacy and learning progressions. Most have been introduced without obvious…
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Mind the Gap: Understanding the Indigenous education gap and how to close it
Glenn Fahey
24 June 2021 | RR41
Indigenous educational disadvantage remains among the most pressing and persistent public policy challenges in Australia. Despite bipartisan and intergovernmental commitment to ‘Closing the Gap’, has done little to move the needle in education outcomes. Dispiritingly poor education outcomes persist despite the best of intentions, considerable…
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…
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…
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…