The last time school funding occupied so much public and political attention was during the Whitlam years. Policy makers with long memories will recall that the gestation period for the Karmel report was…
After last week’s High Court challenge verdict on funding chaplains in schools, religious education is back in the headlines. The role of religion in Australian schools has been vigorously debated for…
In days of old, when Legislative Councils were appointed bodies, Labor Governments would try to swamp them with suicide squads of members who, once appointed, would vote to abolish the House. On Tuesday…
AUSTRALIA BY NUMBERS: The Australian Bureau of Statistics has released the first batch of its census data. We’ve asked some of the country’s top demographers and statisticians to crunch the numbers on…
Today, the High Court of Australia dramatically altered the previously understood scope of the Commonwealth’s power to spend money and enter into contracts. This decision has immediate repercussions for…
The 2012 federal budget has been described as “a big taxing, big spending budget” with a big focus on welfare. The first spending measure to be legislated and to come into effect is the new Schoolkids…
When most people picture the typical school bully, they think of a kid who is likely to have been bullied themselves. A child with low self-esteem who is trying to make themselves feel better by picking…
Following the refusal of the federal government to commit to the Gonski Review and the recent announcement in Victoria of further cuts to already disadvantaged schools and students, the issue of equity…
Australian science is “generally in good health”, but faces major challenges in the form of falling science participation and literacy in high schools, mostly stagnant enrolments at universities, and diminishing…
As the fifth year of NAPLAN testing gets underway this week, it has prompted the usual debates. Are the tests in our student’s best interests? Are students adequately prepared? If teachers are “teaching…
More than 33,000 disenfranchised young Australians are taking part in at least 400 “non-conventional schooling” programs, according to the largest ever national survey of students who have fallen out of…
The Gonski Review sought to create a new funding system for Australian schooling, because what we currently have is a mess. It was to be transparent, fair, financially sustainable and effective in promoting…
School funding has been a tortured issue for government, and especially federal Labor governments, for most of the past half century. Since the seminal Karmel Report of 1973, the funding levels and relativities…
Every school student in Australia would be allocated enough needs-based funding to be educated to a national standard, under a landmark proposal to pump an additional $5 billion of government money into…
The Gonski review of school funding promises to be a watershed in the history of Australian education. Much is at stake. There is a real chance to fundamentally change the way our divided school system…
When an Australian government is willing to risk losing an election over the way it funds our poorest, most disadvantaged schools, rather than our wealthy schools, only then will meaningful change be possible…
The Federal Department of Education says it advised the Australian Academy of Science’s authors of a break in the series of student-numbers when it supplied the data. The lead author, Professor Denis Goodrum…
Almost half of all Australians aged 15-74 years had literacy skills below the level required to participate effectively in our society, according to a 2008 study from the Australian Bureau of Statistics…
Making students repeat a year when they’re not doing well socially or academically is not uncommon in Australia. About 8-10% of students repeat a grade at some point in school life. But there is a major…