Teaching
Featured Publication
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 high-achieving. The particular challenges facing…
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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…
Read about it: Scientific evidence for effective teaching of reading
Kerry Hempenstall, Jennifer Buckingham
07 March 2016 | Research Report 11
Five from Five is now a community education project supported by MultiLit, a reading program developer and publisher. How children learn to read is one of the most studied aspects of education. There is a large and rigorous body of scientific evidence identifying the key…
The future of education — a structural perspective
Jennifer Buckingham
22 August 2013
AISNSW Executive Conference, Killcare NSW Thursday 22 August 2013 The Centre for Independent Studies For those of you who attended the AISQ State forum in Queensland in May, much of this presentation will be familiar. When I spoke at that meeting, I said that when…
Media & Commentary
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…
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.…
After too many wasted weeks, our schools need a focus on literacy and numeracy
Glenn Fahey
05 June 2020 | Spectator
School students are now almost entirely back to regular classes, but the battle isn’t yet won. What should students be doing once they return to school? Opportunistic progressives now seek to exploit the pandemic for — you guessed it — a ‘new…
All quiet on the education leadership front
Fiona Mueller
29 March 2020 | Canberra Times
Prime Minister Scott Morrison and other leaders rightly point to the risks facing the educational progress of young Australians as our nation locks down. Given the data showing that many…