PISA

Lean over PISA. Make way for a better future for schools

By Chris Bonnor

As the year grinds to a close, we celebrate the end-of school results of our Year 12 students. It’s an annual ritual, the festive season is always accompanied by school league tables and predictable stories about school and student success – somewhat in contrast to the seeming failure of other schools and students.  But something

Distorted: this feeble report misses the boat on classroom behaviour

By Linda Graham

At an event at Parliament House earlier this year I heard that 2024 is going to be the year of education. That is excellent news given that we haven’t heard much about education from the Albanese government but, to be honest, that has been somewhat of a blessed reprieve given the hyperventilation of the previous

Why is there so much talk about teachers right now? Because we are afraid of them

By Meghan Stacey, Mihajla Gavin, Jessica Gerrard, Anna Hogan and Jessica Holloway

The federal minister for education Jason Clare convened a roundtable to solve the teacher shortage on the eve of the new government’s Job Summit. Items on the agenda? It wasn’t hard to go past working conditions, status, and a growing, chronic teacher shortage as the impetus for history-making industrial action and considerable media coverage. Concerns about

What we really mean when we talk about teacher quality

By Nicole Mockler

Anyone who’s being paying attention of late can tell you that we’re in the midst of a critical teacher shortage, and that attracting people into the profession is a problem, as well as retaining them into and beyond mid-career. Some people, like education workforce researcher Barbara Preston, have been predicting the current situation for years

How to fix education: cut tests, defund private schools

In the final part in our series of what the next government should do to save Australian education,

If only we really wanted to solve the problems

By Jim Watterston

Each day this week, EduResearch Matters will publish the views of educational leaders on the state of education

Australian curriculum review: strengthened but still a long way from an amazing curriculum for all Australian students

By Stewart Riddle

There is much to admire in the proposed revisions to the Australian Curriculum, which were released for public consultation this week. I’d give it a B+. The curriculum content organisers and core ideas have been revised to ensure that they are more closely aligned, with some trimming of content to enable greater depth of study.

The terrible truth about reading rates in Australia (and how to fix them)

By Sue Thomson

One in five of all our students fail to achieve minimum levels of reading or maths. That’s shocking. What’s even more shocking is that if you look at the pool of disadvantaged students, that figure skyrockets to one in three, compared to one in ten among advantaged students. But some disadvantaged students beat the odds and

Serious flaws in how PISA measured student behaviour and how Australian media reported the results

By Alan Reid

International student performance test results can spark media frenzy around the world. Results and rankings published by the