Ever since students’ performance in school has been measured by standardised assessments, one question has trumped all others: What explains variability in these tests? The question really is, why some students are more successful in school than other students. Some parents think that their children don’t work hard enough for success in school. There are authorities who think that students’ success in school depends directly…
read moreLast week, the Productivity Commission released a major report on how to improve Australia’s school and university sectors. “Education is ripe for disruption”, deputy chair Alex Robson said. The commission suggests longer schooldays, online classes taught by qualified teachers, and streaming students into ability groups to improve Australia’s educational performance. But while these ideas may work well for some students,…
read more"Many earlier efforts to define equity in education fall short of adequately combining equality of access and equality of outcomes in education. If we wish to offer world class schools for every child, we need a better definition of what equity in education means." What do people want? Three years ago, I asked my colleagues the following questions: What do Australian adults think about educational equity? Do they think our school…
read moreLast Friday, Australia’s state and federal education ministers met with emotional teachers, who spoke of working on weekends and Mothers’ Day to cope with unsustainable workloads – and how they were thinking about leaving the profession. This was part of their first meeting hosted by the federal minister Jason Clare. The top agenda item was the teacher shortage. The issue has certainly reached crisis point. Federal education…
read moreOne of Labor’s key education pledges is A$50 million to encourage school leavers with an ATAR over 80 to study teaching. This is part of the new government’s plan to “fix teacher shortages”. The teacher shortage in Australia has reached crisis levels. But this must be addressed by improving the working conditions for existing teachers, not by cash incentives to university students. Thousands of vacancies Teaching…
read moreBy Pasi Sahlberg and Caitlin Senior As the new political leadership in South Australia state their plans for improving education, we should all keep one fact in mind: Australia is an outlier in global education. Not because it provides every student a ‘fair go’. Quite the opposite. Because it is uniquely unfair. In Australia, according to international data, at the age of 15 the most socio-economically disadvantaged students…
read moreI have always seen great potential in the Australian education. In 2019, I told the ABC that based on what I have seen after spending a year here, it was my belief that Australia had “one of the best education systems anywhere.” “It is world class. But only for some children,” I pointed out. I have two primary school-aged children and my wife works in education – hence my position to the question how to change Australia’s…
read moreBy Pasi Sahlberg and Adrian Piccoli If you were a disadvantaged child today in an Australian school, chances are high that a majority of the other children in your school would also be disadvantaged. Your school would most likely need more resources to have experienced special education experts; it probably would not have qualified mathematics and science teachers, and nobody to teach music. In this respect, Australia is an outlier…
read moreI was trembling. Not because I was about to do something risky or scary – quite the opposite. This was a situation I had been in many times before, but I was nervous about what was going to happen next. I was on the Concert Hall stage at the Sydney Opera House looking at an audience of about 2,000 people. Not to perform music, thankfully. I’d been invited to speak about why Australia should abolish its private schools. Typical…
read moreSchools are resuming classes amid parents' fears their children may have a COVID 'lockdown gap' in their education following the stresses of remote learning. The worry is children could not have possibly learnt as much at home, with parents as stand-in teachers, as they would have in usual school surroundings. But to a renowned international education expert, these fears betray a uniquely Australian attitude and could even harm…
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