School funding

Why Simon Birmingham is wrong about school funding

By Bronwyn Hinz

Education ministers from all of Australia’s governments, state, territory and Commonwealth, met on Friday to begin negotiations over

Turnbull’s $1.2 billion “additional funding” for schools is not additional at all, here’s why

By Bronwyn Hinz

The Turnbull Government budget announced an additional spend of $1.2 billion on schooling between 2018 and 2020. It

Charter schools: an old, flawed idea and wrong for Australia

By David Zyngier

A new report proposes Australia adopt a US styled charter school, or UK type academies, approach as a solution to our falling scores on international tests. It even suggests Australia should consider for-profit schools. The report comes from the Centre for Independent Studies, a conservative pro-business pro-privatisation think tank. US charter schools and UK academies

Urgent: take a closer look at the Abbott Government’s plans for school funding

By Bronwyn Hinz

Two months ago, four proposals for reforming government roles and responsibilities in schooling were leaked from the Abbott

The ‘right’ to government subsidised choice of schools is another wasteful snout-in-the-trough entitlement

By David Zyngier

Parents who choose a private school for their child have a ‘right’ to expect governments to help with the costs because they are taxpayers; so the argument goes in Australia. Certainly chief executive of Independent Schools Victoria, Michelle Green, makes such an argument. But where does this so-called ‘right’ come from? Neither Michelle Green nor

Australia’s most disadvantaged children invisible in official NAPLAN results

By Sue Creagh

It seems simple enough. The idea behind the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) testing program

URGENT: we need to act on equity in Australian schools now

By Stewart Riddle

There is an equity problem in Australia and we urgently need to talk about it. Christopher Pyne couldn’t

Reid responds to Donnelly’s “inaccuracies and obfuscations”

By Alan Reid

My blog of 3/8/2014 was an edited version of the opening statement I made in a debate with

Kevin Donnelly replies:the Liberal Government’s policy of independent public schools will raise education standards in Australia

By Kevin Donnelly

(Note: What follows is an edited and expanded version of Dr Kevin Donnelly’s presentation at the recent ACSA

The Abbott Government’s policy of ‘independent public schools’ will lower standards and widen inequalities in Australian schools.

By Alan Reid

[NOTE:This is an edited version of the negative case against the Abbott Govt’s Independent Public Schools policy made