March
Sayers Group the latest beneficiary in Newington co-ed tussle
The Sydney boys school may be winning its battle to admit girls by 2026, but it’s clocked up some expenses doing so.
February
How not to waste Gonski school funding
Additional federal money may unfortunately extend and expand inefficient and ineffective practices rather than lift the quality of teaching.
May 2024
Schools sweat on election funding promises as Victorian debt rises
Melbourne’s Hampton Primary School fears the Victorian government won’t follow through on a promise made on eve of the 2022 election.
March 2024
Private school parents save the education system $4.6b a year: study
A new analysis calculates that governments spend $4.6 billion less each year than they would if all students were enrolled in public schools.
February 2024
Science supports rote learning in schools: report
A push to return classrooms to explicit instruction, phonics and rote learning is based on the science of learning.
One in three Aussie kids can’t read this headline: Grattan
Schools need to transform the way they teach reading so that fewer children get left behind, think tank report says.
Half of all kids attend school regularly. Parents are to blame
Lax school attendance is “a national issue” that should be taken with greater seriousness by families, the head of an independent education evidence body warns.
January 2024
School fees paid? Then double your budget
Rising school fees are heaping stress on household budgets. And then there’s the extra cost of uniforms, sports gear, music lessons and camps.
December 2023
Australia’s science curriculum is not broken
The performance of science students has stopped declining as resources from private publishers became available to teachers. Investing more in what is working will be far more productive than starting from scratch.
No, drinking while WFH is not OK
An ACT primary teacher spotted drinking directly from a wine cask during a Zoom call with a supervisor disputed having his pay docked. He lost.
How to fix Aussie kids’ dire classroom behaviour
Australian children are among the worst-behaved at school. A senate report has come up with some solutions.
September 2023
How to turn around Australian kids’ appalling classroom behaviour
Australia’s education system has consistently been marked down when it comes to the behaviour of students and the capacity of teachers to manage classrooms.
August 2023
How a love of books turned this school’s NAPLAN results around
Victoria topped the states in 16 of 20 categories of the latest literacy and numeracy measures. Elsternwick Primary School had a simple plan to turn its scores around.
NAPLAN benchmarks have changed, but bad results stay the same
The national school test results show one in three children failed to reach expectations in basic numeracy, reading and writing skills.
One-third of Australian children behind on their learning: NAPLAN
This year’s simplified NAPLAN results reveal one in 10 children are in dire need of help and one in three are below the national benchmark.
July 2023
Labor to overhaul teaching standards and ‘focus on fundamentals’
State and federal education ministers hope the changes will also boost numeracy and literacy as NAPLAN scores go backwards despite billions in extra funding.
May 2023
If kids can’t read, then the writing is on the wall for them
Teaching children to read is a core promise of our education system. Every time we fail to deliver on this promise, we shut down a lifetime’s possibilities.
Nine-year-olds’ literacy at standstill
The reading ability of Year 4 students didn’t go backwards during COVID, but it hasn’t improved either.
What’s the point of NAPLAN if schools ignore what it’s telling them?
One in five children leave primary school with only scant literacy and numeracy. But it’s not too late, a new report finds, if proper measures are put in place.
April 2023
Bright kids being overlooked in ‘epidemic of underachievement’
More than half of all academically gifted students are not identified by their schools as having profound talents, research reveals, and as many as two-in-five are not going on to complete a uni degree.