Eightfold Path to Improve Education Policy and Practice

The Gonski Institute for Education at UNSW Sydney’s Building Education Systems for Equity and Inclusion report lays out eight recommendations to rebuild Australian education policy. 

Focusing on nationwide, whole of government approaches, the report looks to encourage connecting policy to data and evidence.

Associate Professor Jane Hunter, University of Technology Sydney says, "Political drivers and partisan politics in Australia have continually acted against the creation of a successful, stream-lined evidence-based profession where the voice of teachers is valued and listened to. Most education bureaucrats and policy makers do not have ‘the lived experience’ of what it means to effectively teach young people in schools.

"I would agree that the seeds of ‘intergenerational policy failure’ germinated some time ago and it will take time to cultivate new ground. Frequent policy changes and shifts in education agendas based on election cycles are amplified by the unique policy and administrative architecture of federalism. It’s created inequities throughout school-based education as the report notes.

"Curriculum change fatigue is a real phenomenon in schools. In many respects we are ‘over curricularised’ for a country of 25 million people – there are too many layers, too many accountabilities and K-12 education is caught right up in all of that.”

The report’s eight recommendations cover off on using data to inform policy and encouraging research, improving living conditions for teachers and creating a cohesive system of education oversight across states and territories and addressing the evenness of funding.

Total government (Commonwealth, State and Territory) funding to schools must be based on equitable distribution. Money should be distributed while factoring in a school’s ability to raise other funds, and taking into consideration the school, student, and community educational (dis)advantage.

Systemic whole of government oversight is required. Its focus should be on the overall health of the education system offering reforms and initiatives targeting inequities in the inputs, throughputs, and outputs of schooling using evidence-based interventions.

Teachers need to be helped to secure housing whether it be as renters or owners, and other cost of living pressures on educators reduced.

Commonwealth and State and Territory and  Departments need to work together to build infrastructure linked to explicit goals and outcomes and within a set timeframe.

The Australian and state and territory governments should establish a formal body where elected representatives from all school sectors can participate in decision-making regarding policy on the operations of schools and school systems.

Governments need to use data to enable evidence-informed policy decisions and aid researchers and systems in their efforts to improve education outcomes.

Similarly, education research funding needs to be expanded to assist in the creation of data that is useful in informing policy, while stakeholders need to be incentivised to design and conduct projects.

An audit of existing system and school structures needs to be held to identify and remove any administrative requirements on schools and staff that do not directly improve their capacity to deliver high quality instruction.