AARE blog

Change doesn’t happen by doing more of the same

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Jason Clare’s announced plans to dissolve ACARA, AITSL, ESA, and AERO, into the Teaching and Learning Commission raises questions regarding the need and function, and also what the focal issues are and how they may be addressed.

The Teaching and Learning Commission will seek to address issues of inequity and student attrition from public schools through increased standardisation of teaching with greater emphasis on explicit instruction, literacy teaching narrowed to phonics instruction, and classroom management.

The Mpartwe Declaration set out the Australian goals for schooling as: 

Goal 1: The Australian education system promotes excellence and equity 

Goal 2: All young Australians become:

  • confident and creative individuals
  • successful lifelong learners
  • active and informed members of the community.

As one of the most inequitable schooling systems in the world, Australia has a long way to go in achieving these goals. Australia’s response has been to double down on standardisation, though is standardisation a solution or simply creating and exacerbating the issue?

Will increased standardisation raise student academic achievement?

Sally Larsen has repeatedly shown the claims for falling achievement are inaccurate, yet these claims continue as the basis for changes in policy, practice, and oversight. The tenacious hold to these claims raises questions as to motives well beyond student achievement.  

The issue that needs exploration and discussion is what achievement can and should be. Central to standardisation is the focus on narrowed areas for learning, primarily literacy and numeracy. With narrowed focus comes narrowed approaches designed with the intention of high achievement for all. Lost is recognition for learning beyond the narrowed focus, for example Australian students’ achievement in creativity. Also lost is the value for human growth and the purpose of schooling reaching well beyond learning. 

Will the Teaching and Learning Commission open discussion as to the purpose of schooling and education more broadly and in turn open a way for a diverse array of success?

Will increased standardisation reduce student exodus from public schools?

Jason Clare’s creation of the Teaching and Learning Commission seeks to address rising rates of school dropout and attrition from public sector schools. Before doubling down on standardisation which has been growing for over a decade (the same time in which concerns for achievement, equity, and behaviour have risen), it would be helpful to look more closely at why children and young people are turning away from public schools and what they are turning to. 

Home education and special assistance schools are the antithesis of standardisation, yet are the fastest growing sectors in education.

When I explored the experiences of families who home educate, the random selection of families showed standardisation to be the central factor that ‘pushed’ them into home education. Home education had not been an active choice, rather a last option the families felt pushed into taking as the standardised approaches at school were not meeting the needs of their children. Home education is the fastest growing sector of education and anecdotal evidence so far suggests the recent (post pandemic) upswing is in response to the increasingly standardised schooling not meeting the diversity of student needs.

Within independent schools, the fastest growing area is special assistance schools. When considering the attrition of public school students, it is important to recognise that not all independent schools are the same. Independent schools are more often thought about in the debate over funding and assertions of ‘double dipping’ into school funding and high parent fees. The vast majority of independent schools however, are low fee schools, and some (a growing number) are free providing the flexibility and responsiveness public schools were unable to provide.

Will the Teaching and Learning Commission explore the qualitative research that provides nuanced understanding as to why students are leaving public schools, and in turn support public schools to flexibly respond to the diverse needs of students?

Will standardisation address Teacher Workload?

The announcement of the Teaching and Learning Commission comes hot on the heels of the recent interim report from the Productivity Commission which proposed a national database of lesson plans. A strong argument behind the provision of lesson plans for teachers is workload. A recent UK report into the impact of standardisation showed there was no difference on teacher workload between standardised and non-standardised approaches given the need for modification to meet student needs. 

In my work with pre-service teachers I have found the necessity for them to modify externally developed lesson plans to be responsive to the range of learning, motivation, engagement, and developmental needs in a classroom takes longer than when they create their own lesson plans to meet the needs of the children they are working with.

The Productivity Commission seemingly ignored their own consultations where a key theme was the need for:

“Empowering teachers. Teachers should be supported with professional development to enhance their lesson planning skills (NCEC, qr. 29; Teach for Australia, qr. 31). Government policy should encourage innovation and flexibility in lesson design and delivery (AITSL, qr. 55; ESA, qr. 67).”

Standardisation is not about improved teaching nor teacher workload, rather it is a quest to ‘teacher-proof’ teaching. Here we might ask what are we ‘teacher-proofing’ from? Standardisation reduces the capacity for teachers to develop the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers. For example, how might a teacher develop to the level of Highly Accomplished Teacher when the standards require: “Exhibit innovative practice in the selection and organisation of content and delivery of learning and teaching programs”. Standardisation does not allow for innovation, and without innovation we will continue to replicate the status quo of inequity.

Will the Teaching and Learning Commission listen to teachers as to what is weighing them down in their workload to find ways to build time for the core work of teaching beyond the classroom?

Will increased standardisation of Initial Teacher Education Address Inequity?

A role for the Teaching and Learning Commission will be to double down on Initial Teacher Education to ensure compliance to the TEEP Report with focus on development of practical strategies for teaching and classroom management. The direction for increased standardisation in ITE has been widely critiqued not least for the lack of evidence on which claims have been based.

Initial Teacher Education is frequently landed with claims of teaching too much theory not enough practice. Such suggestions highlight a view of teaching as performance and not the complex relational interplay that teachers know all too well.

Standard 1 of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers is ‘Know students and how they learn’. There is very good reason for this being the first standard – teaching is relational. The impact of teaching is dependent on the relationship built between teacher and students and across the learning environment. Underpinning how teachers form relationships is knowledge of learning theory, theories of development, and more. Value for theory to inform teaching practice is integral to pre-service teachers meeting the graduate standards.

Standardisation is the very thing we need to avoid in Initial Teacher Education and instead support teachers as intelligent, capable professionals to ‘know the students and how they learn’ to design teaching for diverse learning needs across varied contexts.

Will the Teaching and Learning Commission value the complex interplay of theory and practice in developing new teachers able to design for the diverse array of student needs into the future?

Will increased ‘Evidence-Based Practice’ Address Inequity?

The announcement on the creation of the Teaching and Learning Commission comes before the report on the inquiry into AERO. Though perhaps not before we know the findings. 

AERO has been commended on the provision of “data-driven research and swift distribution of user-friendly advice for teachers”. This is an interesting and tautological claim given all research is data-driven, though highlights the value for specific data as promoted by AERO.

The pre-digestion of research disempowers teachers, seeking to simplify the complexity of teaching. Pre-digested research from AERO and other organisations such as The Grattan Institute have been critiqued heavily for the narrow selection of research (reliant on randomised controlled trials and meta-analyses), misrepresentation of research, reliance on self-referencing and oversimplification leading to errors. The reductionist view of research to directions for teachers to follow as per the emphasis on explicit instruction (or direct instruction as intended), removes teachers from a pedagogic role, reducing teaching to performance.

Will the Teaching and Learning Commission explore ways to support teachers to engage with research and be researchers to make decisions relevant to their students, and in turn re-position teaching as a desirable profession for people to join (and stay in)?

Not ‘what works’ but ‘what works here today’

Colleagues and I have been working with teachers, school leaders, and representatives of education organisations across the public, Catholic, and independent sectors, along with academics. Our aim has been to draw together researchers and educators to understand to how we may work together to raise awareness to the problems associated with reliance on a narrow view of evidence-based practice, and how we may open conversation for support and grow the enriched evidence-based practice of teaching. 

We have found agreement across sectors as to the detrimental impact of evidence-based practice resulting in standardisation seen to exacerbate inequities in the constraints placed on schools to make decisions relevant to their contexts. While the dominant narrow view of evidence-based practice seeks ‘what works’ one school-based researcher told us the focus in schools is ‘what works here today’. Research can only ever provide insight to what has worked in the past whether that be years ago or yesterday. It is the role of those in schools to interpret research with the evidence from existing practice and evidence from students to determine what will work in their context at any given time. 

The UK report into the impact of standardisation showed reduced self-efficacy and autonomy amongst teachers using standardised approaches. Self-efficacy and autonomy are essential to teacher ongoing professional learning that may enable equitable outcomes for all students. Autonomy has been raised throughout our work with teachers and school leaders where their emphasis has been on autonomy to engage with evidence for themselves, to be the decision makers and designers of teaching.

Will the Teaching and Learning Commission work to rebuild teacher professionalism through empowering them with autonomy to engage with the full scope of evidence in context to create teaching for learning?

Finally, will the Teaching and Learning Commission support schools to achieve the Australian goals for schooling? Not through further standardisation, no.


Nicole Brunker is a senior lecturer in the School of Education and Social Work, The University of Sydney. She was a teacher and principal before moving into Initial Teacher Education where she has led foundational units of study in pedagogy, sociology, psychology and philosophy. Her research interests include school experience, alternative paths of learning, Initial Teacher Education pedagogy, and innovative qualitative methodologies. She’s on LInkedIn and on X:

New Super Bureaucracy for Schools: Visionary Reform or Risky Gamble?

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Federal Education Minister Jason Clare has unveiled the biggest shake-up in schooling policy in decades, announcing plans to merge four national education agencies—ACARA, AITSL, AERO, and ESA—into a single Teaching and Learning Commission (TLC). The idea is to bring core areas of curriculum, assessment, reporting, teaching standards, research, technology and data under one roof, rather than leaving them fragmented across multiple bodies.

Clare’s agenda is ambitious. At a speech delivered this week, he presented the TLC as a bold and targeted solution to Australian education’s most troubling challenges, including declining Year 12 completion rates, underperformance in disadvantaged communities and deeply entrenched inequities.

He shone a bright light on public schools, highlighting that the proportion of students completing Year 12 has fallen “from about 83 percent to as low as 73 percent” over the past decade. By contrast, completion rates in Catholic and Independent schools have remained high and stable. Public schools, Clare argued, “play an outsized role in educating some of the most disadvantaged children” and must be at the centre of efforts to lift outcomes and close equity gaps.

The proposed TLC is designed to align with the Better and Fairer Schools Agreement (BFSA), the new 10-year national funding deal (2025–2034) signed between the federal government and all states and territories. Clare described the BFSA as “a $16 billion investment” that commits all governments to lift outcomes and tackle inequity.

The BFSA includes a suite of reforms and targets designed to lift student performance, address student wellbeing and mental health, attract and retain teachers, tackle inequalities and improve access to evidence-based professional learning and curriculum resources.

Not exactly a surprise

As bold as this looks, the TLC idea is not entirely new. As David de Carvalho, former ACARA Chief Executive Officer, pointed out this week, the writing has been on the wall for years.

Debate about the suitability of the “national architecture” of Australian schooling has been long-standing. The potential for agency mergers was raised explicitly in the 2019 Review of the National Architecture for Schooling in Australia, led by Simone Webbe. While that review stopped short of recommending one single body, it did explore merging ACARA and AITSL. Ministers showed little appetite for such structural change at the time, but the idea lived on in policy backrooms.

When I conducted research for my book The Quest for Revolution in Australian Schooling Policy, I interviewed more than 80 senior policymakers. Many were deeply dissatisfied with the existing national machinery, describing it as fragmented, duplicative and incoherent. They spoke of blurred responsibilities, overlapping mandates, and uneven power relations when federal, national and state agencies jostle for influence.

I am now conducting another round of interviews with senior policymakers as part of a new project funded by the Australian Research Council, and the same themes keep repeating. Australia has developed a patchwork of multiple national agencies tasked with different aspects of schooling, but it lacks a coherent forum capable of strategically steering the system as a whole. This absence of a national compass for long-term policy design and coordination is precisely what Clare’s proposal seeks to address.

The landslide victory of the Albanese government has created a rare window for bold reform. The TLC proposal comes at a moment where dissatisfaction with existing arrangements, the promise of new policy solutions and favourable political conditions have converged to make once-unlikely changes possible.

But is it a good idea?

For decades it has become increasingly difficult to see “who is steering the ship” of Australian schooling policy. While federal influence has rapidly expanded, so have national organisations that have varying relationships to Australian jurisdictions and schooling sectors. 

Greater national coherence through a TLC could help provide some clarity. But there is also a dangerous flipside.

Diversity across our federation has long acted as a safeguard against over-centralisation and the domination of short-term political agendas. The fact that states and territories retain the constitutional authority to govern schools is at the very core of what it means to be a federation. It ensures that no single level of government can fully dominate and that local contexts and sectoral priorities have legitimate roles in shaping education.

In his classic text Seeing Like a State, anthropologist James Scott provides a compelling set of historical evidence to show the issues that emerge when humans seek to homogenise systems. Scott shows that while the logic of standardisation seems to make sense—because in theory it allows for greater control over inputs and outputs—reality always bites back.

This is the double-edged nature of the TLC proposal. If it delivers, then equity and performance across our schools may finally improve. But if its policies fail, the whole system will feel the impact. In a federated model, policy missteps can often be contained within jurisdictions. In a more national model, the whole nation is at risk. 

A real danger lies in assuming neat designs from above can steer the realities on the ground. Perhaps, in this moment, the government would do well to remember the advice of another TLC (the 1990s R&B pop group): “don’t go chasing waterfalls” and “stick to the rivers and the lakes that you’re used to”—unless, of course, they’re absolutely sure the system is ready for the plunge.

Oh, and then there’s politics

On paper, the political logic behind the TLC is easy to grasp. Clare will have a compelling argument to make to state and territory ministers when they next meet at the Education Ministers Meeting (EMM). A streamlined agency promises national leadership, coherence, less duplication and greater accountability. It also allows Clare to show his government is prepared to be bold on education reform.

Even if ministers agree to progress the TLC, the politics of implementation will be fraught. While Canberra funds schools generously, it does not run them. Schooling is constitutionally the responsibility of the states and territories, and any reform that muddies this division of roles is bound to be politically difficult. Moreover, states and territories rarely speak with one voice, and even when they do, they approach these debates with different histories and vested interests.

The influence states can exert over national agencies is also a major point of debate. The governance of ACARA and AITSL provides an important precedent. When ACARA was established in 2008, it was set up as a co-owned body, with state and territory ministers given the right to nominate board members. Catholic and Independent schooling sectors were also granted representation. 

AITSL, by contrast, is a Commonwealth-owned company with an independent board of experts rather than jurisdictional nominees. 

These contrasting models highlight the delicate politics of shared authority and the constant negotiation required between federal, state, territory and sectoral interests.

A key question is what the governance structure of the TLC will be. Will states retain nomination rights, as with ACARA, or will expertise be privileged over representation, as with AITSL? And what role will Catholic and Independent representatives have at the decision-making table? 

These are delicate politics to navigate, and if ministers or sector representatives feel their role in steering national education is weakened, resistance will be fierce.

The stakes are high

The Albanese government has the mandate, the means, the resources, and the political capital to drive major change in Australian schooling. And the problems to tackle are real. 

Falling Year 12 completion rates, entrenched disadvantage in public schools, teacher shortages, flat results, and declining student engagement are all urgent and pressing. As Minister, why wouldn’t Clare seek to tackle them head on?

Yet more money, new targets and a super agency will not be enough to turn the tide. Reform must also build cultures of collaboration, trust and professional engagement within schools. History shows that reforms which sideline the professional wisdom of teachers rarely produce lasting improvement. If the TLC is to succeed, the teaching profession cannot be an afterthought: it must be in the driver’s seat.

For decades, the default formula of Australian governments has been to set tighter targets and impose more top-down directives. There is little evidence this approach delivers sustained gains.

Regardless of whether the TLC succeeds or fails, it represents another step in a decades-long shift towards federally driven national reform. Any federalism scholar will tell you this runs counter to the principles of federalism and the benefits of subsidiarity.

The creation of a TLC is being sold as a solution. It may well become the foundation of meaningful reform. But it could just as easily centralise risk in ways that make the system more fragile rather than more resilient.

Jason Clare’s gamble is clear. If the TLC works, it could be the engine of a new era in schooling reform. If it sinks, the whole ship goes down with it.


Glenn Savage is a policy sociologist and professor of education futures in the Faculty of Education, University of Melbourne. His research works at the intersection of education policy, strategic design and system change.

Images of Jason Clare from his Facebook page.

Immigrant students: how to support motivation and achievement

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Around the world nations have experienced significant growth in their immigrant populations, including an increase in immigrant students. The way schools respond to this has a significant impact on how well immigrant students adapt to and succeed in school. 

Although there are many success stories, there are also immigrant students who struggle at school. They are then at risk of missing out on vital educational and job opportunities after school. This impacts individual students as personal potential is unrealised. It also impacts at the national level because immigrants have and always will be a key part of nations’ social and economic development. 

We need to understand how to support immigrant students in overcoming academic challenges and supporting their educational wellbeing.

Our study

In a recent research study published in the Journal of Educational Psychology, we harnessed the Academic and Cultural Demands-Resources (ACD-R) framework to investigate the factors that are important for nurturing immigrant students’ academic motivation and achievement. We used the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) data from Australia and New Zealand—two countries with a history of receiving migrants to live and raise their families. PISA is a worldwide study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) of 15-year-old school students’ learning and performance in mathematics, science, and reading. 

Two main parts of PISA are a student survey and a school leader survey. In a previous study, we focused on the student survey and how teachers can support individual immigrant students. This present study focused on the school leader survey and how whole-school action can support immigrant students.

The ACD-R Framework 

Under the ACD-R framework, demands are features of the learning process or learning environment that can get in the way of students’ educational progress – while resources help and support students’ educational development. These demands and resources may be academic factors or ethno-cultural factors that impede or assist students’ educational pathways.

Participants in Our Research

The research involved 545 schools across Australia and New Zealand) and nearly 5000 immigrant students.

The school leaders were asked to report on key features of their school, including the various demands and resources present in the school. We then linked their responses to the motivation and achievement scores of the immigrant students in their school (summarized from the PISA student survey). This enabled us to examine the whole-school factors that are associated with the academic development of immigrant students in the school.

The Measures in Our Study

The main measures in our research were drawn from survey items administered to school leaders asking about the academic and cultural demands and resources in their school. Academic demands were assessed via two measures. The first tapped into the extent to which school instruction was hindered by staffing and resourcing issues, what we call a resource shortage. The second asked about the extent to which students’ learning was hindered by the nature of teaching (e.g., teachers not meeting individual students’ needs), referred to as hindered learning. Academic resources were assessed with a measure which asked about the extent to which students were provided with resources to support their learning, referred to as student assistance (e.g., rooms where students can do their homework).

Cultural demands are represented by immigrant socio-economic disadvantage. This refers to  the proportion of immigrant students in a school experiencing socio-economic disadvantage. Cultural resources comprised cultural learning, shared cultural values and immigrant student language support. 

Motivation was assessed through measures of self-efficacy (students’ belief in their capacity to attain desired academic outcomes) and valuing (their belief in the usefulness and importance of what they learn). 

Achievement was based on students’ achievement on the PISA mathematics, science, and reading tests. 

In all our analyses we accounted (controlled) for school location, school type (non-independent, independent), staff/student ratio, average class size, and percentage of immigrant students in the school—so we knew that any significant demand and resource findings were above and beyond any influence due to school location, etc.  

Our results

The study identified four demands and resources that were significantly associated with immigrant students’ motivation and achievement: 

  • Student assistance and cultural learning (academic and cultural resources) that had positive effects.
  • Resource shortage and immigrant student socio-economic disadvantage (academic and cultural demands) that had negative effects

In addition to these significant demands and resources, we also found immigrant students’ motivation was significantly linked to their academic achievement. Immigrant students who believed in themselves (self-efficacy) and saw the relevance, importance, and usefulness of school (valuing) were likely to achieve highly.

Strategies for Schools

These findings point to six areas of whole-school action, each attending to a significant demand, resource, or motivation factor in the study.

  1. Resource shortage (academic demand). Our study signalled various aspects of school-level resource shortages that need attention when supporting immigrant students, including inadequate teaching- and learning-related infrastructure (e.g., teacher shortages) and  a lack of educational materials, resources, and learning spaces. 
  1. Student assistance (academic resource). At the same time, we found academic resources in the form of student assistance played a supportive role for immigrant students. Our study indicated such resources include provision of staff to help with homework and study, practical help and relational support from teachers that help immigrant students develop their academic skills and provide a sense of belonging at school. 
  1. Immigrant socio-economic disadvantage (cultural demand). Schools may look to target the barriers that disadvantaged immigrant families can experience if they are  socio-economically disadvantaged. In our research, we identified “agency” as one factor and suggested schools can work with immigrant parents and ethnic communities to design and implement linguistically and culturally responsive interventions (e.g., authentic school involvement of immigrant students’ cultural community) to empower families in the process of supporting immigrant students, especially those that have newly arrived to the country. 
  1. Cultural learning (cultural resource). Promoting this involves schools fostering learning about diverse cultures and the histories of these cultures. This can be strengthened through curriculum that provides a nuanced and authentic representation of diverse ethnic and cultural groups both locally and globally.
  1. Self-efficacy (motivation). Boosting students’ self-efficacy can involve teachers breaking schoolwork down into manageable chunks for students to experience smaller successes as they learn (this builds confidence through tasks), encouraging students to recognize their academic strengths (that also builds academic confidence), and teach students how to challenge negative beliefs that may be undermining their self-confidence. 
  1. Valuing (motivation). There are three types of valuing that can be nurtured. The first is attainment value, which involves explaining to students how what they learn at school is important. The second is intrinsic value, which involves setting schoolwork that arouses curiosity or is enjoyable. The third is utility value, which involves making it clear to students how what they learn is relevant to their lives or to the world more broadly.

Our research shows how to implement whole-school action to support immigrant student cohorts. The findings  demonstrate that attending to cultural demands and resources, alongside academic factors, has significant potential for optimising immigrant students’ educational development through school and beyond. 

Andrew Martin is Scientia Professor of Educational Psychology and chair of the Educational Psychology Research Group, School of Education at UNSW. He specialises in student motivation, engagement, learning, achievement, and quantitative research methods. Gregory Arief D. Liem is associate professor in the Psychology and Child & Human Development Academic Group at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. His research focuses on student motivation and engagement. Rebecca Collie is Scientia Associate Professor in Educational and Developmental Psychology at UNSW. Her research interests focus on motivation and well-being among students and teachers, psychosocial experiences at school, and quantitative research methods. Lars Erik-Malmberg is professor in education at the University of Oxford. His research interests are in quantitative research methods and students’ academic development. Tim Mainhard is professor of educational sciences at the University of Leiden. His research interests are in teacher-student interactions, student motivation, learning, and wellbeing.

Who isn’t coming to the Father’s Day breakfast?

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My daughter is in a Grade 6 class with a Nigerian boy called Ibrahim. He has lived with his mum here in Melbourne since fleeing the forests of Nigeria two years ago. Ibrahim’’s father now lives in Canada. They were a family unit when Ibrahim was a baby but Ibrahim has not had a continuing relationship with his Dad for many years. Ibrahim cannot remember his father but he tells the kids in his class that he knows him.

This morning it is the Father’s Day celebration at school. To blend in, Ibrahim has told his classmates that his mum is bringing him to school for the Father’s Day breakfast. His mother will not be coming to the breakfast, as she starts work at the factory at 5 am. Ibrahim knows this but plays along with the charade of attending anyway.  

The masks people wear

My daughter and I have been talking about the masks people wear. We are thinking that Ibrahim has a mask. We think he may have worn his mask this past week when the teacher gave him a Father’s Day card with ‘father’ blanked-out on the front, so he could write to someone else instead … someone who was not his father … someone who could replace his father. Ibrahim bravely asked for a Father’s Day card instead of the blanked-out version but the teacher refused him. Possibly she thought she was doing the right thing because Ibrahim didn’t have a relationship with his father anyway.

In a democratic inclusive community all  voices of people in our school communities need to be heard but on days like Father’s day, media and the status quo dominate. In thinking about Ibrahim’s situation let’s consider which people in our school communities may feel challenged by or uncomfortable on Father’s Day celebrations at school.

Let us also take into consideration this discontent in the days and weeks before Father’s Day where it is heavily publicised in social media, on the TV and in our magazines and newspapers.  Reflect upon a child whose father has died or a child whose father has been incarcerated. Perhaps a child who has lesbian parents or who is fostered or adopted. Consider a child where the mother is the sole parent through separation or divorce or a child conceived by an anonymous donor.

How does the child feel?

Perhaps contemplate how Father’s Day feels for a child whose father abuses them? From a wellbeing perspective on days like Father’s Day, Mother’s Day and Grandparent’s Day the dominant culture in schools may be inadvertently re-traumatising some children because of our socio-cultural inability to look grief and loss in the eye. Perhaps it is easier for the majority of the school community to look away from the pain and maintain the status quo.

Back to Ibrahim . During this school week the children made Father’s Day gifts twice … once with the homeroom teacher and once with the library teacher. I wonder if these teachers knew that Ibrahim wanted a ‘real’ fathers day card for his dad. Ibrahim was required to make a gift for someone else who was not his father.  As with the Father’s Day card incident this denotes three times where Ibrahim has to face his father’s absence in the presence of a classroom full of children.  Then he has to navigate his father’s absence again when he brings the card and gift home for his mother to see.

Children like Ibrahim could write someone else’s name on the blanked out version of the card and bring their uncles or their grandfathers to breakfast but it would seem that any way you look at it, their father’s absence is still highlighted. The difference between children who have a father present and those children who do not becomes obvious when they are required to participate in these activities.

Fear and taboo

For instance, consider the reaction of volunteer staff when a child who has been bereaved of their father fronts up to the Father’s Day gift stall with their class and the volunteer behind the desk says ‘What would you like to get your Dad?’ and the child says ‘my dad’s dead’. This type of situation highlights possible feelings of fear and taboo around the topic of death and the struggle to meet others’ grief head on.  

Let’s look briefly at what re-traumatisation could mean for parents who have suffered grief or loss. Every week for the last six weeks I have read on the header of the newsletter ‘Father’s Day breakfast, Friday 5th September’.

That is one evening every week for the past six weeks that I think of Ibrahim’s mother. I think of her reading this and reflecting on Ibrahim’s absent father or worrying how her son will navigate the Father’s Day breakfast at school. I wonder how she will traverse Father’s Day at home when her son presents the gift he has made, while she grieves the loss of a partner and a father for her son.

Family structures have changed

Family structures have changed and no longer solely represent the 1950’s nuclear family type in a white western construct. Schools have the chance to lead and celebrate the diversity of families rather than focus on the gendered exclusive representation of a male or female parent. Schools might choose to celebrate these days differently or not at all. Perhaps renaming them as a ‘Family Day’ or ‘Carer’s Day’  will meet the need of present-day family structures.

Taking the opportunity to celebrate or mourn the changed or changing nature of family life allows compassion to thrive instead of ignoring the silenced minority and their wish to just blend in. Paying attention to who might be missing this year at the Father’s Day Breakfast may be the first step forward. It may mean a move towards a compassionate, inclusive school community. I hope this morning at breakfast that someone … anyone … will take a look around and ask, ‘Where’s Ibrahim?’

Carla J Kennedy is a lecturer/researcher in education with the School of Education/Arts/Community at Federation University, Victoria, Australia. Her research using social inquiry has focused on school communities investigating compassion, existing power and inequalities in schools.

Image of orange jigsaw with the word Family. Some pieces are scattered

Who is not coming to the Father’s Day breakfast?

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The idea of celebrating Father’s Day in schools is contested.

Why? It can be hard to navigate these type of celebratory days which have a reliance on outdated family structures. The nuclear family type has now changed to more diverse family representations. This results in differing points of view depending where you fit.

From the study  I conducted with school community members including teachers, students, parents and principals who had experienced a close bereavement I discovered thoughts and feelings of marginalisation within their school community. This was particularly pronounced when discussing Mothers, Father’s and Grandparent’s Day. This provoked interesting perspectives and an unearthing of discontent and uncomfortableness for students, parents, teachers and principals alike.

In a democratic inclusive community all  voices of people in our school communities need to be heard but on days like Father’s day, media and the status quo dominate . . . let’s consider which people in our school communities may feel challenged by or uncomfortable on Father’s Day celebrations at school.

Read Carla J Kennedy’s personal reflection

A story of discontent

Opinions from parents from education and health backgrounds tell the story of discontent by suggesting how these celebratory days can change and what considerations need to be made. Principals are in a difficult space, trying to meet the needs of all different types of family. However, the often marginalised voices of bereaved individuals in school communities go unheard and need to be highlighted when thinking about these celebratory days.

Lorenzo, a bereaved parent whose daughter died and who works as a teacher, makes comment about how as a school community we can open up to conversations about diversity

He says: The key behind it (Father’s Day) is to actually you know bring up and talk about what it is to be part of a family… not doing colouring activities that’s based upon you know a coloured in rose picture for your mother or a coloured in hammer picture for your dad. You know it’s more complicated than that. Families are different … what your family looks like, it might not be what anybody else’s family in your classroom looks like and it might be great for them to hear … you live with your granddad and your dad because you know both of their partners have passed away or you live with two mothers and because you know you’ve got gay parents.

. . . I think that those opportunities are too valuable to pass up. And it kills bigotry and it kills racism and it kills homophobia and all that stuff if you’re exposed to those things as a young person. If you’re sheltered from it and you live in a homogenous, you know sanitised world, then it’s easy to see the other as being very different. Whereas, if it’s in your face and it’s there, then it’s really hard to foster those opinions that aren’t very helpful.

Renaming these days

Differently, Jonathon as a health worker and bereaved spouse, considers his children on Mother’s Day and promotes the idea of renaming these days instead.

He says: I think the challenge around Mother’s and Father’s Day and things like that when you’ve had a parent that’s died or a parent that you don’t have, is a big challenge for schools around how they manage that. I think the challenge with Mother’s Day or generally is that it’s heavily promoted. My kids always get tetchy around that time and we have discussions about it … for schools it’s much better to say … you know ‘Carers Day’ or to kind of work in a way that says ‘how to celebrate the people that care for us’ would be a much better framework …

Sensitivities for families

Jane, as a lead teacher and a person who has lost both her parents, makes comment about sensitivities for families around this time.

She says: I guess it’s about reaching out and being aware of different peoples’ situations. Even today (Father’s Day), it’s a tricky time. How we publicise that, invitations, it can so easily slip off the tongue. It’s Father’s Day or something … no, it’s just a day that we acknowledge someone special in our lives. I think it’s being mindful. It’s raising a flag and saying let’s broaden that so it’s not a reminder I’m different. Yes, it’s a reality you may have lost a parent. We know that, but it’s another stab in the heart about that person’s absence. I think we need to be very sensitive to that.

A common thread

These three statements pose very different considerations going forward. The common thread is that celebratory days are a challenging space and sensitivity is critical. Schools are encouraged to consider the perspectives of marginalised populations in their school. The following recommendations  are also offered for schools wanting to take action on these issues

  • Actively discuss with teachers, parents and students how the diverse range of family structures are acknowledged on celebratory days
  • Consider the relevance of these days in a changing culture
  • Listen attentively to the advice and opinions of marginalised voices in your school community. What do same-sex parents, adoptive parents, bereaved parents, sole parents and grandparents as carers think about Father’s day this year?
  • Develop policy to ensure all family types are considered in decision-making.

Every year many schools actively promote and participate in Father’s, Mother’s and Grandparent’s Day activities. They rightly want to celebrate these dedicated family members. However, it is important to recognise that families do find these days sad and/or uncomfortable. If we are truly working towards an inclusive environment all voices in school communities need to be heard.

Carla J Kennedy is a lecturer/researcher in education with the School of Education/Arts/Community at Federation University, Victoria, Australia. Her research using social inquiry has focused on school communities investigating compassion, existing power and inequalities in schools.

Coloured jigsaw representing the diversity of students

Can Thriving Kids now save the NDIS? And what are its risks?

Inclusive Education, , , ,

When the federal government announced its new Thriving Kids program in August, the headlines focused on the NDIS. The minister promised this $2 billion initiative would “secure the future” of the scheme.

But the program will not be delivered through the NDIS. From 2027, children under nine with mild to moderate autism (in itself a concept contested by people with lived experience and advocacy groups)  or developmental delays will no longer enter the scheme. Instead, they will be supported through schools, early childhood centres, Medicare, and community services.

On paper this makes some sense. Best practice in early intervention says children should be supported where they live, learn and play. But this policy was announced without warning to states or schools. When premiers raised concerns about costs, the Commonwealth threatened to withhold hospital funding unless they agreed.

This is not just a disability or health policy story. It is an education story. Because the responsibility for Thriving Kids will land squarely on the shoulders of teachers and early childhood educators, and they need the resources and time to partner with families, and specialists to make this work.

Schools are already at breaking point

Our recent national surveys for Children and Young People with Disability Australia (CYDA) show how fragile equity already is in Australian schools.

  • 60% of parents reported their child with disability had been bullied at school – a 10% increase since 2022.
  • More than half said their child had been excluded from excursions or camps.
  • Almost one in three reported restrictive practices such as restraint or seclusion.

The words of parents and students are sobering. One parent told us:

“Several teachers were clearly antagonistic to my son and didn’t believe in ADHD […] Essentially gave the impression they thought we were just pandering to him and he was ‘playing’ us.”

And from a young person:

“Most of my peers don’t have basic and correct knowledge about hidden disabilities…They see me as weird, so they refuse me to join for the group work.”

Children and their families also told us that most teachers want to help, but they lacked training and systemic support. The result is that many children with disability are excluded, stigmatised and harmed in places that are meant to keep them safe.

Now imagine schools becoming the place where they receive the primary or even only support for their disability- a place where many feel scared and excluded.

Mental health is on the line

Children with disability are already at much higher risk of anxiety, depression and distress. The ABS reports that Australians with disability are nearly twice as likely to experience high or very high psychological distress as their peers.

Families in our surveys directly linked bullying and exclusion to mental health crises, school refusal and disengagement from learning. These harms are not caused by disability itself. They are the product of exclusionary environments and under-resourced systems.

If Thriving Kids pushes children into schools and early childhood centres without significant new investment, the likely outcome is not thriving but worsening mental health.

Prevention 

States such as Victoria are trying to build prevention-based wellbeing strategies. Its Wellbeing in Victoria strategy, released this year, positions inclusion, connection and belonging as protective factors against poor mental health. It names racism, ableism and exclusion as risks that harm wellbeing.

This is exactly the kind of upstream thinking we need. But prevention only works if it is backed with training, funding and planning.

Thriving Kids risks turning prevention into rhetoric while shifting the real costs onto schools and services that are already struggling.

This is part of a bigger pattern

Education researchers have been warning that schools are being asked to carry too many responsibilities that sit outside their control. Teacher shortages, rising student distress, and high levels of exclusion are symptoms of a system under strain.

As Martin Mills recently argued on this blog, schools are often left to deal with crises that are not of their own making – from housing insecurity to gender-based violence. Thriving Kids fits this pattern. It is a policy announced in the name of reform, but it pushes responsibility downward without adequate consultation or resourcing-with states, with families, with schools or with teachers..

What should be done differently

If Thriving Kids is to succeed – and if the NDIS is to be made sustainable – responsibility must be matched with resources. That means:

  • Co-design with schools, early childhood educators, families and disability advocates.
  • Funding that supports inclusion – training for teachers, accessible infrastructure, and staffing to meet need.
  • Accountability for equity outcomes – not just access numbers or budget savings.

Without these, Thriving Kids may protect the NDIS’s balance sheet but leave children and families worse off.

Final word

We need to focus on prevention and inclusion. The voices of families and young people remind us it is better to stop a child from being pushed out of school than to struggle to bring them back in, once excluded. Schools and early childhood centres can be powerful places of protection and belonging. But they are already stretched, and too many children with disability are missing out.

Thriving Kids may promise reform. But unless it comes with planning, resources and genuine collaboration, it will not help children thrive – it will simply add to the burden of systems already at breaking point.

Catherine Smith is a senior lecturer in education in the Faculty of Education at the University of Melbourne with specialisation in technology, wellbeing, equity, policy and community development.

Are you free atm? I’m so upset

Phonics, Reading, teaching reading, , , , ,

At last year’s AARE conference, a friend texted me and asked: “Are you free atm? I’m so upset.” We caught up, and she explained that she had been in a session on teacher education reforms (yes, TEEP) when a small number of commenters in the room started loudly jeering phonics research. 

What’s the problem?

First, she’s an expert in this space. She completed her PhD with one of the leading reading researchers internationally, and she conducts careful and well-designed studies that investigate the cognitive processes involved in reading acquisition.  She felt incredibly unwelcome. 

Second, we’re an evidence-based profession. There is a strong body of evidence that learning phonics systematically supports beginning readers. No, it’s certainly not everything – let’s put that strawman aside. But it matters. We know this in education. 

It’s tempting to see my friend’s experience as a one-off. But those of us who conduct research in cognitive and educational psychology will see it as part of a small but uncomfortable pattern. A vocal minority have linked our work with eugenics, Nazism, hyper-capitalism, totalitarianism and more. We are ‘boosters’ with agendas who want to make children suffer via robotic drill and kill. Nothing could be further from the truth. 

Education is a broad church

Education is inherently interdisciplinary. Educational psychology, cognitive science, and neuroscience tell us about the mechanisms of learning and development and how we can use this knowledge to support learners. Then, educational philosophy informs our understanding of what education is for and the nature of evidence itself. And educational history helps us understand what we have done before and why, while sociology informs our understanding of social contexts and their influence on children’s educational attainment and experiences. These foundation pillars enable us to act with purpose, to ensure our practices are aligned with what we know about learning and development, and to connect these understandings with goals we consider important in society. 

In educational psychology subjects I have designed, we have taught ITE students about memory and cognition, attention, higher order thinking, motivation and engagement, self-regulation and metacognition, emotional health and wellbeing, and social relationships. Each of these has different developmental precedents and pedagogical implications: some cutting across academic disciplines, and others specific to individual disciplinary structures and goals. 

The battle for space and depth

Given the volume of these topics, I would love the space to go into greater depth again with my students. Yet a perennial challenge in ITE is the relatively limited space for general education studies. AITSL’s Program Accreditation Standards and Procedures rightly demand substantial space for discipline studies and professional experience, meaning we must make tough curriculum choices. 

Those inside and outside university walls may disagree with me regarding questions of volume, and I am always happy to have those conversations – recognising, of course, that we have shared goals in wanting the best for teachers and their students. What should not happen, however, are personal attacks on those of us who do psychological research that call into question our character, political orientation, or care for students and their learning. 

We need to raise the bar.

A need for civility in educational discourse

I was recently drawn to an editorial and corresponding letters regarding purpose, humility, civility and science. Interestingly, this wasn’t about education. It related to disagreements within psychiatry regarding medication and mental health and was published in the Lancet in 2018. Central were calls for clear eyed assessments of evidence to be complemented with professional respect, civility, and recognition of common goals in wanting patients to recover fully and well.

Sometimes within education, disagreements about evidence are about interpretation, quality, or generalisability. Very often, they are not about the original research itself but about what it means and what we do with it. When we move from point-scoring to civility, it becomes possible to identify what we all agree on. Learning styles are a myth. Working memory is limited. Multitasking isn’t possible. These are entirely uncontroversial and supported by decades of research. 

We can then identify where specific evidence might be unsettled, where application has been overgeneralised, or where we simply don’t have enough evidence yet. Yes, explicit teaching has a robust evidence base. It is particularly good for supporting novice learners to build new knowledge. No, it’s not the right tool for every learning outcome. We want to ask about expertise, about disciplinary goals, and purpose. This doesn’t mean choose your own adventure: on the contrary, it means incisive assessment of what is needed when, for how long, and why.  

In research I conducted with the NSW Council of Deans of Education while Head of School at Wollongong, we mapped stakeholder responses to each of the TEEP reform areas. We found strong agreement across higher education providers, employers, and teachers’ associations regarding the importance of psychological insights, alongside other things teachers must know. 

A positive turn

While I have painted a gloomy picture, we are fortunate that broadscale disdain for psychology in education is not the norm. The vast majority in our profession welcome evidence and knowledge-building from educational psychology and cognitive science, as they do evidence and insights from other informing disciplines. Moreover, we have the structures to prove it. 

Wollongong hosts the multimillion dollar Early Start institute, with members from education, psychology, and health sciences collaborating to bring research-informed understanding of children and their development to the community. Within ACU’s Faculty of Education and Arts there is the excellent Centre for the Advancement of Australian Literacy and associated Literacy Clinic, the Institute for Positive Psychology and Education, and the Institute for Learning Sciences and Teacher Education. La Trobe’s School of Education hosts the Science of Language and Reading (SOLAR) lab, while the University of Melbourne’s Faculty of Education hosts the Centre for Wellbeing Science. UNSW, long a powerhouse in learning and cognition, frequently hosts inter-institutional Educational Psychology Roundtables. At my own institution, Macquarie, we are developing a new incubator integrating learning sciences and education. 

We must engage in good faith

Education has long been criticised externally. Some criticisms are valid, even if we might disagree with them. As public institutions we should engage with them in good faith. Some are misinformed or intentionally insulting. We do our colleagues a disservice if we allow similar incivility within the profession. 

Ultimately, debates about evidence in education should be about the children in our classrooms. When we allow ad hominem attacks from within to replace scholarly discourse, we risk closing off inquiry that could genuinely help young learners. 

Penny Van Bergen is an associate professor, psychology in education, in the School of Education, Macquarie University. She is former head of school and honorary professor at the University of Wollongong. She is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and has won awards from the Australian Government, Unijobs, and Australian Psychological Society for her embedding of psychological knowledge in education.

Trauma awareness: A new priority for higher education

Trauma, Trauma-responsive, , , , ,

Complex trauma is increasingly recognised as a hidden epidemic. It is estimated that one in four Australians suffer the effects of complex trauma. In response, the application of trauma approaches has expanded significantly across school settings. Advice about how to respond to trauma in school classrooms is available. However, when it comes to higher education, we’re only just beginning to catch up, underlining the need for a better understanding of this area.

Many students bring complex trauma into their university experience. For some, this trauma is linked to earlier life experiences such as abuse, loss of family members, systemic disadvantage or time in care. For others, it’s the experience of university itself that can cause or compound harm. Unclear processes, inflexible assessments, and a lack of cultural safety can all affect student wellbeing in ways that aren’t always recognised. These may intersect with other on-campus sources of trauma, such as the high rates of sexual violence on campus.

Not just distress

This is not just a matter of individual distress, it’s a matter of equity. Students affected by trauma are more likely to be members of communities already identified by universities as priorities for inclusion and support. These include those from low-income backgrounds, First Nations students, disabled students, LGBTQ+ students, and refugee-status backgrounds, among others.

Trauma awareness in higher education is important for at least four reasons.

  1. To enhance learning outcomes, creating environments where all students can engage more effectively.
  2. To prevent re-traumatisation by recognising and reducing unintentional harm.
  3. To support equity for students navigating trauma alongside their studies.

To fulfil social responsibility by understanding and working to reduce the social conditions from which trauma originates.

Trauma-informed teaching and mental health services are vital but fulfilling social responsibility also demands action. Universities’ research expertise and community influence place them in a unique and powerful position to examine the structural factors that create trauma. These include poverty, discrimination and institutional violence, and to advocate for systemic changes that address root causes rather than simply managing consequences.

Trauma is both a personal experience and a social phenomenon

Most discussions of trauma in higher education rely on clinical understandings. While useful, these approaches come from specific cultural and historical contexts. Cultural historian Ruth Leys reminds us that trauma is not a fixed concept. Its meaning has changed over time—from moral injury to psychological shock, to neurobiological response. These shifts are shaped by history, culture, and politics. In education, we need to be mindful of which versions of trauma we rely on, and what they might leave out.

Indigenous scholars in Australia and internationally offer sophisticated understandings. These perspectives emphasise collective and intergenerational trauma, and recognise how ongoing systems such as colonisation, racism, and dispossession contribute to harm. For these thinkers, trauma isn’t always a past event. It’s a present reality. However, resilience and healing are also emphasised. Such perspectives can expand how we think about student wellbeing and what it means to create safe and inclusive learning spaces.

Importantly, responding to trauma is not just the job of counsellors or academic staff. Every person who interacts with students has a role to play, from tutors and supervisors to front-desk staff and senior leaders. A ‘whole of university’ perspective foregrounds the need for deep reflection about how systems, language, and everyday practices within the academy may impact students. These are students who are already doing their best to manage difficult circumstances.

Listening, not assuming

In our own conversations with students and educators, we’ve heard how trauma can impact concentration, relationships, assessment navigation, and more. We have begun to think of the impacts of trauma as an overlooked aspect of intersectionality, which can imbricate other minority positions and disadvantages. For instance, when students struggle to access support designed specifically for them, this can heighten distress and create a secondary trauma that damages trust in institutions.
Yet, especially when trauma experiences or inequities are not disclosed or known, what helps is not always more support, but more flexibility. Trauma-informed practice can’t be one-size-fits-all. Instead, this approach needs to be adaptable, attentive, and rooted in the realities of student experience. Adopting a critical stance that deliberately questions ‘taken for granted’ approaches or perspectives can also help us begin to unpack what may be deeply unsettling expectations and practices for some students.

Help shape a better future for students

Our team has recently begun a new research project. It focuses on trauma awareness in higher education. We want to understand how student trauma shows up in university spaces. And we also want to know how institutions might respond in ways that are more equitable, inclusive, and supportive. We intend to benchmark understandings of trauma across members of the higher education community. We’ll use this knowledge to create practical initiatives grounded within higher education realities.

If you work in Australian higher education and are interested in participating, you can find out more about the project here.

Sarah O’Shea is lead investigator in the Higher Education Equity Research Unit and Maree Martinussen is a researcher in social class and higher education equity , both at Charles Sturt University.



Ontario Canada

Oh Canada! What we could learn from Ontario now

equity and educational outcomes, equity in schooling, Uncategorized, , , , , ,

Australia and Canada share much in common in terms of history, culture and demography. School students in the two countries have similar socio-economic characteristics and each nation spends similar amounts on school education and pays teachers similarly.Despite these similarities, Canada has much lower levels of social segregation in its schools, and higher levels of equity and achievement, consistently outperforming Australia in the OECD’s PISA tests across all learning domains. 

In October 2024 a diverse group of educators, school leaders, researchers and peak body heads visited Canada to find out what Australia can learn about creating a school system that enhances equity, opportunity and achievement.

The Australian study group, supported by Australian Learning Lecture and Leading Educators Around the Planet, visiting the Toronto Catholic District School Board.

We wanted to find out what Canada can teach us about creating a fair, inclusive, equitable and effective school system. This task was made more challenging – and interesting – because education is a purely provincial responsibility. As far as education goes, Canada is akin to a union of thirteen different nations. This post, based on the recently published Lessons From Canada: An Equal School System is Possible, reports on two of the largest.

Ontario, Canada’s largest province, has an actually existing needs-based funding system.

Australia has been trying and failing to implement a needs-based funding system for 50 years; Ontario fully implemented needs-based funding more than a quarter of a century ago. While there has been much recent talk about historic funding deals in Australia, the Commonwealth will deliver just 2.5% of the additional funding this decade.

Ontario’s fully implemented needs-based funding system means, for example, that in 2024/25 the Halton District School Board, in one of the most affluent parts of Toronto, will receive $14,273 per student. By contrast, the school board that covers the vast stretch of territory of northwestern Ontario will receive $40,678, almost three times as much, per student. Ontario shows that needs-based funding is achievable, and genuine reform is possible.

In Ontario secular and faith-based schools are resourced and regulated on a common basis

The government has promised Australian public schools receive the full minimum resource standard by 2034. That’s nine years away. But even then, inequitable resourcing will continue. 

Why? Australian private schools receive both public and private funding, something which undermines the equity intention of governments. The result is that total per-student funding, for example, at Sydney’s Newington College isn’t far short of the per-student amount for Cobar in remote NSW.

In contrast, Ontario shows that it is possible to fund all schools, irrespective of sector, according to the educational needs of the students they enrol. This is how it works. Secular and faith-based schools are fully publicly funded, prohibited from charging fees, and operate on a level playing field of rules, regulations and policies. A large majority of young Ontarians (around 92 percent) attend schools that are part of the common legislative and financial framework. The small sector of fee-charging private schools, serving just 7 percent of students, receives no public funding.

Ontario’s schools have low levels of social segregation and support high achievement.

The consequence of removing fee barriers, as well as other enrolment discriminators, is that Ontario’s faith-based schools serve a much higher proportion of children from low-income households than their counterparts in Australia. Even though our societies are similar, the level of social segregation in Ontario’s school system is much lower than in Australia. Ontario’s 15-year-olds achieved at significantly higher levels in PISA 2022. This pattern is repeated in Alberta which also has faith-based public schools, low segregation and high student achievement.

Needs-based funding across secular and faith-based school systems is affordable.

Ontario spends slightly less on education than Australia as a proportion of GDP. And yet it can deliver full needs-based funding across secular and faith-based school systems. This is partly because Australian governments already fund so many non-government schools at or above the level of equivalent public schools; and it’s partly because the Government of Ontario provides no public funding to fee-charging schools.

Quebec has similar policy settings to Australia and the same problems

Like Australia, Quebec heavily subsidises private schools, with public funding as high as 75 percent of the level received by public schools. At the same time, the province does little to regulate fees or enrolment practices. Like Australia there is a high level of social segregation across Quebec’s schools, with the children of high-income families mostly concentrated in private schools, and selective public schools. The level of social segregation in Quebec is much worse than any other Canadian province.

In Quebec, a group of concerned parents and citizens are campaigning for a fairer, more inclusive and more effective school system.

École Ensemble (School Together) has developed a plan for a ‘common network’ of publicly funded schools. The proposed common network would include public schools and ‘contracted’ private schools. The latter would be fully publicly financed and free while retaining management autonomy (as is the case in Ontario). All schools in the common network would be assigned enrolment areas optimised to maximise socio-economic diversity and reduce travel times. To minimise disruption private schools would transition to the common network in a graduated way over a six-year period. Economic modelling commissioned by École Ensemble reveals that the common network would save the Government of Quebec almost CA $100 million each year once the transition is completed.

A path forward in Australia

Our governments must demonstrate much greater ambition if we are to enhance equity and achievement in our schools. 

Existing funding agreements have delayed most additional funding until the 2030s. At the same time, essential recommendations of the Improving Outcomes for All report remain unimplemented. Critically, the expert panel called for annual public reporting of the socio-economic diversity of Australian schools and school systems; and a review to evaluate interventions that have successfully enhanced socio-economic diversity in comparable countries. Canada shows just how much we have to learn (and we haven’t even mentioned British Columbia).


Tom Greenwell and Chris Bonnor are co-authors of Lessons From Canada: An Equal School System is Possible published by Australian Learning Lecture. A Concise Summary version is also available.

Chris Bonnor AM is a former teacher and secondary school principal. He was a previous head of the NSW Secondary Principals’ Council and co-authored The Stupid Country and What Makes a Good School with Jane Caro. He has served on the Board of Big Picture Education Australia, was the lead author of six Centre for Policy Development papers and has contributed articles to a range of publications and media.

Tom Greenwell is co-author with Chris Bonnor of Waiting for Gonski, How Australia failed its schools (UNSW Press 2022) and Choice and Fairness: A Common Framework for All Australian Schools (ALL 2023). He has written extensively about Australian education and public affairs and teaches history and politics in the ACT public education system.

Palestine teachers

A diasporic ethical response to Segal’s Plan to combat antisemitism in education

anti-racism, racism, , ,

As an anti-Zionist Jew and social-justice educator, I want to address two claims that I find offensive in Jillian Segal’s Plan as Australian Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism.

One claim is that generations younger than 35 years are vulnerable to antisemitic propaganda, as too immature to grasp antisemitic history that justifies Israeli state existence. That Segal avoids saying ‘existence on Palestinian lands’ conflates antisemitism with critique of Israel’s ethnocentric occupation of those lands.

Another claim is that Segal, and those she recruits, are positioned to design curricula that guide young minds, including those Jewish, away from ‘antisemitism’.

Do Jews under 35 lack capacity to draw lessons from family histories of Holocaust cruelties, or from Tsarist pogroms that my grandparents fled as refugees? Are we simply wrong to see parallels with Israeli affliction of ongoing Nakba upon Palestinians, based on a biblical ‘right’ to establish solely-Jewish sovereignty from river to sea?

Is it antisemitic to see compelling reasons for my Jewish identity to make ethically-diasporic ‘exodus from Zionism’ (quoting Jewish scholar-activist Naomi Klein)?

My youthful biographic learning

When I was a 19-year-old undergrad at Cornell University, the Gulf of Tonkin incident incited U.S. government to replace France’s fading imperialism in Vietnam with ‘anti-Communist’ war upon Vietnamese lives and lands. I began learning capitalist-imperial histories behind such warfare at campus teach-ins and soap-box speeches on the Arts Quad. I joined the Students for a Democratic Society anti-war movement, where I learned from (hi)stories shared by professorial allies. For example, Pakistani Professor Eqbal Ahmad, friend of Palestinian social-justice icon Edward Said, told how, as a Muslim boy in a northern region of what would become India, he watched in shock as his father was murdered by Hindus seizing Muslim lands (see Ahmad, and Said’s foreword, in Confronting Empire). This precipitated meaningful educative dialogue about ethnocentric cruelties towards ‘others’.

At age 19, was I too unripe to learn from ethnically diverse scholar-activists? Such learning continues across my life, from Palestinians and other Muslims, ‘Australian’ First Nation peoples, and more. Dialogically, I learn their life (hi)stories in relation to mine. Does such learning ‘misguide’ my Jewish identity exodus from Zionism? Is Segal’s education plan morally superior to those who illustrate and explain, rather than ignore, capitalist-colonial disregard for people exploited and killed in ethno-nationalist pursuit of empire?

Educative urgencies in dark-age times

In darkening times now and ahead, I take educative insight from Antonio Gramsci, a Marxian activist, elected to Italy’s Parliament. Gramsci analysed 1920s/30s fascist rise in Europe, leading to WW2, in his prison notebooks (after arrest by Mussolini’s police). Gramsci wrote: ‘The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear’.

I argue that a key ‘old’, now dying, is structural capacity, among those in governance power, to sustain decent life standards, and so stem social unrest, in ‘advanced-capitalist’ nations that comprise 20 per cent of global population.

Such had been made possible by colonial-imperial exploitation of labours and resources from the peripheralised 80 per cent. But this reached a limit-point decades ago, as Wallerstein explains. And yet, a horribly morbid symptom is fevered warfare as nations with military might seek regional hegemony. They do so not only to appropriate resources but to forge ethno-nationalist ‘loyalty’ among ‘proper citizens’. Israel is a prime example.

Along with climate catastrophes, desperate refugee masses, cost-of-living hikes and more, a key morbid symptom is a trend towards fascist governance in so-called ‘western democracies’ that remain wedded to capitalism. Unable to redress structurally complex life struggles among rising population numbers, far-right power-forces conjure simplistic populist ‘explanation’ of ‘good citizen’ struggles. They target ‘bad citizens’ (non-whites; women who don’t marry men, etc.) within nations, refugees seeking entry, ‘lunatic left’ judges, politicians, academics and more, as ‘vermin’ who ‘poison the blood of our country’ (Trump’s words, echoing Hitler, as Hallee Conley situates it). In turn, they ‘justify’ harshly punitive military arrests, prison camps, deportations, etc., to ‘make our nation great again’. Capitalist-colonial death throes thus intersect with racialized, sexualized and other structural inequalities at crisis pitch.

In education, far-right nationalising of morals and mentalities – which Segal’s Plan morbidly symptomizes – entails curricular negation, in schools and universities, of ‘Diversity-Equity-Inclusion’ (DEI) attention to ongoing structurally unjust inequalities.

Diasporic ethical fuel for pursuing social-educational justice

Social-justice educators must challenge selective curriculum that negates richly diverse ‘funds of knowledge’ which develop in marginalised lifeworlds. This includes ‘dark funds’ that build as useful knowledges for facing difficult lifeworld struggles. We must counter curricular narrowness, inherent in Segal’s Plan, that promotes ethnocentric assimilation of cultural diversities unequally within moral ‘cohesion-building’.

Curricular activity must instead raise consciousness to how difficult symptoms in young people’s lifeworlds link to structural crises, and in turn develop capacities to rework life contexts towards socially-just futures. This requires educator practice of a diasporic ethics that shares and creates needed knowledges and proactive capacities. It means working together with those whom we teach and from whom we must learn, inclusively building solidarities across ethnic-cultural diversities.

I advocate curricular and pedagogic practice of what Moll calls ‘relational agency’, in which students, community people and educators collectively learn-and-teach together. Doing so, they build capacities to understand and redress what I call lifeworld problems that matter.

To briefly outline this educational approach: In small affinity groups, students spend time outside of school, action-researching mattering problems they identify in their lifeworlds. In classrooms, the groups dialogue around how these varied problems share resonant links to economic, climatic, racialized, gendered and other interwoven structural crises. In both classroom dialogues and lifeworld action-research, educators and community people join students in building proactive capacities to pursue socially-just futures. Over time, visiting (hi)story sharers – such as Palestinian refugees – help to connect locally-lived struggles to globally-wider morbid symptoms of structural crisis.

Such inclusively learning across diversities starkly contrasts with what Freire describes as ‘banking pedagogy’ that deposits ethnocentric norms into students’ brains. That’s the pedagogy featured in Segal’s Plan.

A biographic coda

Against Segal’s plan to assimilate ethnic-cultural diversities into ethno-nationalist norms, I highlight my life of inclusive knowledge-sharing across diversities. My diasporic Jewish identity evolves in rich, if painful, learning from-and-with Palestinians and others who share (hi)stories of forced exodus from lands where they lived. I deeply feel the injustice that, having been born to a Jewish mother, I can choose to ‘settle’ on lands where I have not lived, while Palestinian refugees are denied right of return. 

In ethical counter, I declare myself a Palestinian-Jew. I here take inspiration from the diasporic hybridity voiced by Edward Said in an interview  with Israeli anti-occupation journalist Ari Shavit. Says Said:

[P]art of my critique of Zionism is that it attaches too much importance to home[land] … I want a rich fabric of some sort, which … no one can fully own. I never understood the idea of this is my place, and you are out…. Even if I were a Jew, I’d fight against it.

Responding to Said’s ‘Even if’, Shavit says: ‘You sound very Jewish’. Said replies: ‘Of course…. Let me put it this way: I’m a Jewish-Palestinian’. As an advocate for educative building of life together with diverse others in ethical solidarity, let me repeat aloud: I’m a Palestinian-Jew!!!

Lew Zipin holds adjunct positions at University of South Australia in the Education Futures unit, and at Victoria University in the Moondani Balluk Indigenous unit (as a non-Indigenous ally). His research, including in projects funded by the Australian Research Council, contributes to the Funds of Knowledge curricular approach for meaningful school engagement with rich knowledges that students inherit and develop in diversely marginalised communities. Lew is a member of Educational Researchers for Palestine.