Noel Pearson’s Radical Hope for Education and Equality in Australia

Posted on Wednesday November 4, 2009

A review of an essay by Noel Pearson which argues for a rigorous schooling for Aboriginal students while preserving their culture. >> Read on...

The Testing Obsession in Canada

Posted on Tuesday October 13, 2009

Students have to be able to read, write and do arithmetic in order to do well in other subjects. Having a standardized test for just these core skills, rather than everything that is taught in a school year, would mean that students don’t spend five hours a day for an entire week in a high anxiety testing regime to please some distant high inquisitor of education. >> Read on...

Student Results in Australia are High, but Very Unequal and not Improving

Posted on Saturday September 26, 2009

The latest results from the National Assessment Program for Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) generated a wave of self-congratulation from Education Ministers around Australia which should be qualified. >> Read on...

Disadvantaged by the Revolution

Posted on Monday September 14, 2009

The Building the Education Revolution program has not quite been the revolution expected by some government schools. >> Read on...

Studies Show that Smaller Schools Do Better than Large Schools

Posted on Monday August 31, 2009

Small schools do better than large schools on a variety of school variables including student achievement according to a new review of studies on the effects of school size on education. >> Read on...

Obama’s Plan To Link Teacher Evaluation to Student Achievement Draws Strong Criticism from all Sides

Posted on Friday August 28, 2009

At the end of July, President Barack Obama and US Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, announced that grants worth $4.35 billion would be made available to states to further education change. >> Read on...

Performance Pay Schemes Are Unreliable and Misleading

Posted on Wednesday July 29, 2009

It seems that performance pay based on gains in student achievement may not be so good at identifying good teachers as its advocates claim. >> Read on...

Finland’s Success in Literacy

Posted on Tuesday July 21, 2009

Pirjo Sinko, Counsellor of Education for the Finnish National Board of Education, delivered a keynote address at the AATE/ALEA National Conference in Hobart on 11 July. < >> Read on...

Why Merit Pay Won’t Work

Posted on Wednesday April 22, 2009

Diane Ravitch comments on the Obama administration’s plan to pay teachers based on their students’ “value-added” test scores. >> Read on...

School Re-structuring Options Fail in the US

Posted on Thursday April 9, 2009

Kevin Rudd’s threat to apply school re-structuring sanctions against schools that fail to improve student achievement is doomed to failure according to a new US report on school sanctions. >> Read on...

The Failure of England’s Education Revolution

Posted on Sunday March 15, 2009

This article, published recently in The Guardian, provides a succinct overview of the failure of the education revolution initiated by the Thatcher Government and expanded by the Blair Government. It is a salutary lesson for Australia. >> Read on...

Shifting the blame: the real crisis in education accountablity

Posted on Wednesday February 18, 2009

Some commentators and education elite have made the policy in terms of dollars spent and start looking at ‘accountability outputs’. But shifting the accountability onto schools quite misses the point.< >> Read on...

New National Education Goals Are Contradictory

Posted on Sunday February 1, 2009

The new school year opens this week with new national education goals to follow. Unfortunately, education ministers have set two incompatible goals. >> Read on...

SOS Policy Brief on the New National Goals for Education

Posted on Tuesday January 27, 2009

A Policy Brief published by Save Our Schools shows that the new national Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians (the Melbourne Declaration) promulgated by Australian education ministers at the end of 2008 fails on equity. >> Read on...

Comment: Enough of Small-Minded Education Reformers

Posted on Friday January 16, 2009

I have done my share of complaining about the business types—and the phonies who think they are thinking like business types (when in fact they are clueless about teaching and learning and therefore lean on incentives, data, and an attitude of toughness to mask their ignorance of curriculum and instruction). >> Read on...

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