The Economics and Politics of Teacher Merit Pay
Event | 14 November 2011 | Andrew Leigh MP
The debate over merit pay can be summed up as follows: economists like it, voters love it, and teachers are divided. Can merit pay be made to work? Andrew Leigh MP discussed these issues with John Daley, Grattan's CEO.
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Good Jobs Begin in School
Publication | 10 October 2011 | John Daley
The Prime Minister's Future Jobs forum was missing the one minister who would make the most difference to future jobs, the School Education Minister. The economy and the workplace are changing all the time. Government's task is not to dictate their shape or to protect industries. It is to equip Australians to be able to innovate and manage change. The best way to do that is to raise the quality of school education.
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Measuring Educational Quality
Event | 25 October 2011 |
At this event, Dr Brian Stecher discussed recent changes in education policy in the United States and what lessons Australia can learn from these.
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The Challenges of Learning from Others
Event | 27 September 2011 | Professor Yong Zhao
Professor Yong Zhao, Presidential Chair, Associate Dean of the College of Education at the University of Oregon, presents Challenges of Learning from Others where he discusses some of the benefits and pitfalls of international policy research.
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Accepting Underperformance
Publication | 30 August 2011 | Ben Jensen
"We must sack underperforming teachers." It is something you hear regularly in school education, and is a popular topic for opinion writers and talkback radio. But it misses the point and adds to a longstanding unproductive debate. It jumps to the negative endpoint of teacher appraisal rather than taking an approach that improves student learning.
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Turn East and Learn from the World's Best
Publication | 29 July 2011 | Ben Jensen
Across the country people are looking for ways to improve school education. But we don't have to look far to learn from the best in the world.
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Declining Student Performance
Publication | 5 July 2011 | Ben Jensen
It is difficult to determine which is worse, the declining performance of our students or the lack of a response to it.
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Better Teacher Appraisal and Feedback: Improving Performance
Event | 2 May 2011 | Ben Jensen
Following the release of this Grattan Institute report, Dr Ben Jensen presented and discussed its findings. The report proposes a new system of teacher appraisal that provides constructive feedback to teachers based on a comprehensive appraisal of learning and teaching in classrooms. The new system will bring overdue recognition to effective teachers, spreading good practices through their school and beyond.
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Better Teacher Appraisal and Feedback: Improving Performance
Report | 18 April 2011 | Ben Jensen
A new system of teacher appraisal and feedback in Australia would improve teacher effectiveness, recognise our best educators and lift the outcomes of Australian students to the best in the world.
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Asian Languages Matter
Publication | 23 March 2011 | Ben Jensen
Continuing to neglect Asian languages in our education system we do at our peril. But by improving the quantity and quality of Asian literacy, our current weakness could become a competitive advantage.
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Progress on Education Reform in Australia
Event | 17 March 2011 | Minister Peter Garrett
Following the release of the second version of My School, Minister Garrett outlined the direction of education reform for the coming year and beyond.
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My School 2.0 Step in the Right Direction
Publication | 15 March 2011 | Ben Jensen
The new version of My School is an important step forward: it increases transparency and the information available. But the benefits are restricted if the measures of school performance are inaccurate.
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Finance Data to Help Teachers
Publication | 4 March 2011 | Ben Jensen
The inclusion of school finance data on the My School website creates a new paradigm in school education in Australia and has changed the game for all schools. The new paradigm will demand changes at every level of school education and shift the focus to the drivers of performance.
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Emerging Economic Powers' School Students Setting Global Pace
Publication | 10 December 2010 | Ben Jensen
There is now a greater and more urgent need to invest in reforms to improve school education across Australia. The performance of our 15-year-olds has significantly declined between 2000 and 2009, according to the latest results from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's Program for International Student Assessment. Australia was one of only five countries to show a significant decline during this period.
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Teach Teachers So Students Can Learn
Publication | 15 November 2010 | Ben Jensen
Until we concentrate on enhancing the quality of our educators, there will be no significant improvement in our system. All Australians want to improve the quality of school education. This ensures our children and the next generation have successful lives. And there are growing concerns about how to prepare the economy for the end of the mining boom. Where will our new sources of economic growth come from? What will boost productivity and well-being?
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Effective performance management: the next challenge for our schools
Event | 23 November 2010 | Ben Jensen
A new era of transparency will force considerable change in our schools. The My School website will soon include financial information for each school and more accurate measures of school performance. These changes will provide numerous strategic challenges and opportunities for school administrators, school boards and policy makers. The research shows that improving teacher effectiveness is the most successful way to confront these challenges. However, recent evidence highlights that both government and non-government schools are generally not effective in shaping their organisations to maximise teacher effectiveness and engage in successful teacher evaluation and development. Dr Ben Jensen, Director of the school education program at the Grattan Institute, will address these issues and present strategies for how schools can best confront these strategic challenges.
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Investing in Our Teachers, Investing in Our Economy
Publication | 15 November 2010 | Ben Jensen
Improving teacher effectiveness would have a greater impact on economic growth than any other reform before Australian governments. The improvement in student learning could lift Australian students to the top of international performance tables.
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Teachers Key to Learning
Publication | 12 October 2010 | Ben Jensen
International evidence shows that important debates in Australia about school funding are generally misinformed, and that our focus should be on teacher quality rather than class size.
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Five Reforms to Improve School Education
Publication | 25 September 2010 | Ben Jensen
Ben Jensen's article suggests five reforms that the new School Education Minister, Peter Garrett, could undertake to improve school education. These focus on methods to improve teacher quality as it is the key to improving schooling. A new approach to school funding is also advocated.
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Teacher Quality Key to Better Student Performance and Productivity
Publication | 17 August 2010 | John Daley and Ben Jensen
Better education is the most important single area to get right in public policy. Investing in the quality of teaching will provide greater returns to individuals and the economy than any initiative on the reform agenda today. It also has vital non-economic benefits such as contributing to wellbeing, health, social mobility and reduced crime rates. John Daley and Ben Jensen outline why Australia needs to develop an ambitious evidence-based education reform agenda.
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What Teachers Want: Better Teacher Management
Publication | 24 May 2010 | Ben Jensen
Improving the quality of teachers and teaching should be a central goal of education policy. Evaluating the work of teachers and developing their teaching skills is a key part of improving the quality of teaching. However, an OECD survey reveals that teacher evaluation and development in Australia is poor and amongst the worst in the developed world.
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What Teachers Want: Better Teacher Management - A Grattan Report
Event | 25 May 2010 | Ben Jensen
Grattan Institute released their second education report on Monday 24 May 2010. Dr Ben Jensen, Program Director School Education presented a seminar about the report's findings.
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Economic Returns to Education
Event | 6 May 2010 | Colm Harmon, Saul Eslake, Ben Jensen
What are the links between education and productivity? With the Australian school education system currently going through a major reform, Grattan Institute hosted a seminar which discussed the relationship between education and economic returns. Will the proposed education reforms make a difference to Australian productivity?
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NAPLAN Tests Help Champion Equality in the Classroom
Publication | 15 April 2010 | Ben Jensen
The Australian Education Union needs to rethink its opposition to NAPLAN, the national testing program being introduced by the federal government.The union has confused the value of the tests with the problems that need to be addressed on the 'MySchool' web site.
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Measuring What Matters: Student Progress
Event | 8 February 2010 | Ben Jensen
Grattan Institute is released its first public report "Measuring what matters: student progress" on Wednesday 27 January 2010, looking at the issue of measuring school performance. This issue is relevant to the Commonwealth government's launch of the "my school" website of school performance.
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Measuring What Matters: Student Progress
Publication | 27 January 2010 | Ben Jensen
In Australia, a large percentage of students only reach minimum standards of literacy and numeracy. These students are spread throughout Australia's school education systems; there are few schools that do not have poor performing students who would benefit from improved education. Despite decades of increasing expenditure, student performance has stagnated. We have a moral imperative to improve the performance of the 30% of year 9 students who have progressed to only the very basic elements of writing literacy.
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Why We Need to Elevate School Reform
Publication | 20 September 2009 | John Daley
Long-term thinking in education will add billions to Australian gross domestic product, writes John Daley.
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