ESA

Change doesn’t happen by doing more of the same

ACARA, AITSL, Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO), ESA, Teaching and Learning Commission, , , , , , ,

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?

ACARA, AITSL, Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO), Better and Fairer Schools Agreement, ESA, Jason Clare, , , , , ,

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.