A Cautionary Tale from New York on High Stakes Testing

Posted on Tuesday March 11, 2014

A lecture tour by a US professor of education provides a cautionary tale about high stakes testing and control of education policy in New York State by entrepreneurs and corporations. >> Read on...

Greater Funding Equity Increases Student Results

Posted on Sunday March 9, 2014

New research shows that greater equity in school funding increases student outcomes. >> Read on...

Public Schools in the Top Performing Countries Have Little Autonomy in Budgeting and Staffing

Posted on Tuesday March 4, 2014

An OECD report on PISA 2012 shows that public schools in the top performing countries generally have little autonomy in budgeting and staffing but considerable autonomy over curriculum and assessment. >> Read on...

Pyne’s Opportunistic Support of States’ Rights Has Sabotaged Gonski

Posted on Wednesday February 26, 2014

Christopher Pyne has opportunistically grasped states’ rights to sabotage the Gonski funding plan by not requiring state governments to increase education funding. Yet, the Government is keeping conditions attached to other specific purpose payments to the states. >> Read on...

The Prime Minister Should Fully Implement Gonksi to Improve Indigenous Education

Posted on Thursday February 20, 2014

If the Prime Minister is serious about his “passionate” commitment to improving Indigenous education, he should stop the sabotage of the Gonksi funding model and implement it in full. >> Read on...

Northern Territory Review of Indigenous Education

Posted on Sunday February 16, 2014

Margaret Clark reviews the Draft Report of the Independent Review of Indigenous Education in the Northern Territory. >> Read on...

Comparing East Asia and Australia

Posted on Tuesday February 11, 2014

East Asian success in education shows that it is possible to lift results for disadvantaged students but Australia should avoid emulating the East Asian obsession with cramming and the social cost it incurs. >> Read on...

More Untruths by Pyne on Independent Public Schools

Posted on Saturday February 8, 2014

The Federal Education Minister, Christopher Pyne, is either incapable of getting his facts straight or he is deliberately misleading the public about his plan for independent public schools. >> Read on...

More Deceit by Pyne on Independent Public Schools

Posted on Friday February 7, 2014

Christopher Pyne’s deceit about the evidence on the effect of independent public schools on student achievement has been further exposed. >> Read on...

Pyne Misleads the Public on School Autonomy Yet Again

Posted on Tuesday February 4, 2014

Christopher Pyne has misled the public yet again about the facts on the effects of school autonomy. The evidence he cites is highly selective and misleading and completely ignores the latest evidence from the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). >> Read on...

ACT Chamber of Commerce Needs Education

Posted on Sunday February 2, 2014

In calling for expenditure on ACT government schools to be cut to the level of NSW and Victoria, the Chamber of Commerce has failed to understand the reasons for higher expenditure in the ACT. >> Read on...

Disadvantaged Schools Have Fewer Educational Resources than Advantaged Schools

Posted on Wednesday January 29, 2014

The gaps in educational resources between disadvantaged and advantaged schools in Australia is amongst the largest of all the 65 countries participating in the OECD’s Programme for International Asssessment (PISA). >> Read on...

Islamic School Refused Registration

Posted on Saturday January 25, 2014

The ACT Minister for Education has refused to register a proposed new Islamic School after a damning review shows that it would not be financially viable and failed to meet the educational and student safety requirements of the ACT Education Act. >> Read on...

The Coalition Has Sabotaged Gonksi

Posted on Wednesday January 22, 2014

The Coalition has sabotaged the Gonksi funding plan. It has guaranteed funding increases for private schools but not for government schools. >> Read on...

Kevin Donnelly - The "Cory Bernadi" of Education Policy

Posted on Monday January 20, 2014

Kevin Donnelly uses bad science to link educational inequalities in Australia to genetic differences in cognitive ability and justify the continuation of disadvantage and social inequality in education. >> Read on...

The Folly of ACT School Closures Revealed

Posted on Wednesday January 15, 2014

Education Minister Joy Burch has exposed the folly of the 2006 school closures as an expensive and short-sighted mistake. The ACT Government has spent millions in expanding capacity in areas where schools were closed. >> Read on...

Media Release: Call For Senate Inquiry into the National Curriculum

Posted on Tuesday January 14, 2014

SOS has called on ALP and Green Senators to establish a Senate inquiry into the national curriculum. SOS believes this will provide a better chance for a thorough and balanced review than one conducted by partisan critics. >> Read on...

Unwarranted Speculation by Melbourne University Study

Posted on Saturday January 11, 2014

A Melbourne University study that claims that Catholic and other private school students have better non-cognitive skills than government school students is mistaken. Research studies suggests the reverse. >> Read on...

PISA Results Show that Competition is not the Answer to Improving School Performance

Posted on Tuesday January 7, 2014

PISA results provide strong evidence that competition between schools and the presence of private schools does not lead to higher student achievement. >> Read on...

Gonksi Report and Related Documents

Posted on Tuesday December 24, 2013

The Gonski review report and documents removed from the website of the Federal Department of Education are available here. >> Read on...

Gonski Documents Expunged from the Public Record

Posted on Tuesday December 24, 2013

In an extraordinary move, the Gonski report and related documents have been removed from the website of the Federal Department of Education. It is an indication of how opposed Christopher Pyne is to the Gonski funding model. >> Read on...

NAPLAN Results Show Australia has a Major Equity Problem in Education

Posted on Saturday December 21, 2013

The only verdict to be drawn from the latest NAPLAN report is that Australia has a major equity problem and little progress has been made in alleviating it in the last five years. >> Read on...

Are Finland’s Vaunted Schools Slipping?

Posted on Saturday December 14, 2013

Leading Finnish education expert, Pasi Sahlberg, comments on Finland’s slip down the rankings on international test results from the Programme of International Student Assessment (PISA)._ >> Read on...

Pyne Misled Parliament on School Autonomy Evidence

Posted on Wednesday December 11, 2013

The Federal Education Minister misled the Parliament last week in claiming that school autonomy in staffing and budgeting increases student outcomes. He demonstrated a cavalier disregard of the evidence on school autonomy. >> Read on...

Media Release: PISA Test Results Prove that Increased Funding Should be Allocated to Disadvantaged Students and Schools

Posted on Friday December 6, 2013

The new PISA international test results highlight the need for a new funding scheme that directs more money to disadvantaged schools and students. >> Read on...

Australia's 2012 PISA Results

Posted on Thursday December 5, 2013

The PISA 2012 study shows that Australia’s reading and mathematics results have declined and that the declines have been larger in private schools than government schools. It also shows continuing large achievement gaps between rich and poor. >> Read on...

Private School Registration in the ACT to be Strengthened

Posted on Tuesday December 3, 2013

The registration process for private schools in the ACT is to be strengthened following the endorsement of the recommendations of a review by the ACT Minister for Education. >> Read on...

Bureaucrats in Nowhere Land on School Autonomy

Posted on Thursday November 28, 2013

In Senate Estimates last week Greens Senator, Penny Wright, exposed the ignorance of Federal Education Department officials about research evidence showing that school autonomy over budgets and staffing has little to no effect on education outcomes. >> Read on...

South Korea's Education Success Has a Dark Side

Posted on Tuesday November 26, 2013

South Korea’s highly successful education system has a dark side that Australia would do well not to emulate. >> Read on...

Schools Advisory Council Calls for More Transparency in the Registration of Private Schools

Posted on Friday November 22, 2013

The ACT Government Schools Education Council has called for changes to the registration process for private schools. It says that the transparency and objectivity of the process should be improved. >> Read on...

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