A new proposed deal on school funding delivers the Gonski funding within budget.
Children with at least two years of preschool achieve much higher scores than those who attend no preschool or only one year.
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Two years of high-quality preschool is one of the most effective strategies we have to change the trajectories of children from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Between 2008 and 2015, the number of disadvantaged students enrolled at Australian institutions increased by 50.2%.
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The government says that quality teachers are crucial to improving learning outcomes. Yet they still pursue policies that don’t put these teachers in front of our most marginalised students.
Grammar schools are not the answer.
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The main failure of university expansion is the unwillingness to fund it. Costs are certainly escalating, but priorities are always political as well as financial.
Under a demand driven system, poor students are finding more opportunities to attend university.
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While on the face of it a 1.5% increase in the number of disadvantaged students going to university might seem minimal, in real terms this is genuinely significant.
Does technology help with learning?
John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Follow
Researchers found students’ test scores in science, writing, math and English language arts improved significantly when they were provided with laptops. The benefits were not limited to test scores.
Increasing targeted needs-based school funding is an essential, but not sufficient, condition.
AAP
There are some factors which make students more likely to drop out of university than others. Here are four ways universities can help boost retention.
What makes gifted kids from advantaged families get ahead?
David Woo
America’s low-income but high-achieving kids fail to find the necessary resources, and consequently fall behind. This has huge implications for innovation as well as the GDP.
Differentiation is about enabling all students to reach the same learning goal.
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Differentiation is not about about creating different lessons for every student. It’s about teachers providing a range of options for students to demonstrate their learning.
Should universities ditch the ATAR and use other ways to select students onto courses?
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The ATAR system is cheap and efficient, but it means students are selected to go to university on the basis of a single score which some have claimed is too simplisitc. Is it time for a new system?
Labor has announced it would fully fund Gonski if it wins government.
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Labor has announced it will commit to fully funding Gonski, with a reform package costing $37.3 billion over the next decade.
But is this actually what the Gonski review recommended?
The government see private schools as the solution to quality.
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The dumping of Gonski education funding model will inevitably increase social inequality – funding for public schools will reduce while support for private schools increase.
Scotland is threatening a positive-discrimination policy for making access to universities more equal. While its central argument is right, there’s more to this than meets the eye.
Disadvantaged children find schools increasingly irrelevant to their lives.
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Australian education fails one in four young people. It is time we started exploring why school is not working for increasing numbers of disadvantaged children.