Grattan Institute calls for education reforms

A new report by the Grattan Institute, Orange Book 2016: Priorities for the Next Commonwealth Government, lists a number of recommendations for federal government, covering the broad areas of transport, energy, health and education. On the education front, a major focus is improving student outcomes.

The report suggests a focus on ‘targeted teaching’ — where teachers identify what each student is ready to learn, then teaches them accordingly and tracks their progress. This is coupled with recommendations to improve teaching practice in the classroom, rather than pushing high-stakes accountability or offering performance pay, and redirect funding and resources to areas it will make the most difference. It urges the federal government to press the higher education sector to improve initial teacher training, align funding with education need and intervene in school education areas only where national scale or consistency is advantageous. There is further focus on continuing to improve national testing, curriculum and professional standards, while investing in the development of more effective assessment tools for teachers.

The report also addresses Commonwealth funding for higher education places, specifically the need to avoid reimposing controls on enrolments. A system for developing a more sophisticated pricing system for government-funded places is also discussed.

On another hot topic, HELP loans, the Grattan Institute addresses talk across the sector to recover a greater proportion of course costs from students. As well as lowering the repayment threshold ($54,869 in 2016–17) so that repayments commence earlier and recovering debt from deceased estates, a further recommendation is to report on HELP to clearly identify its interest subsidy and doubtful debt costs.

See http://grattan.edu.au to read the full report.