Education evidence base

• Notwithstanding substantial increases in expenditure on education over the past decade, national and international assessments of student achievement in Australia show little improvement and in some areas standards of achievement have dropped.
• Monitoring outcomes, performance benchmarking and competition between schools alone are insufficient to achieve gains in education outcomes. They must be complemented by the use of data and evidence to identify, and then apply, the most effective programs, policies and teaching practices.
• A national education evidence base is broader than a national data repository and requires two key capabilities:
  • a 'top-down' capability, for monitoring, benchmarking and assessing performance in achieving objectives at all levels of the system, as well as promoting transparency and accountability, and informing resource allocation
  • a 'bottom-up' capability that evaluates the effectiveness in education policies, programs and teaching practices, enabling systematic identification of ways to improve student achievement.
• There is much education data collected, imposing a substantial compliance burden across schools and early childhood education and care (ECEC) services. This burden can be reduced by collecting data more cost-effectively and making better use of it.
  • Access to, and sharing of, data can also be improved through changes to privacy protections and processes for collecting, sharing and linking of data.
• There are some gaps in existing data collections. But the largest gap of all is in the evaluation of policies, programs and teaching practices in Australian schools and ECEC services to identify what works best, for whom and in what circumstances.
  • Without improving and applying evidence to policy making and teaching in schools and classrooms, there is a substantial risk that increased resourcing of schools will continue to deliver disappointing outcomes.
• The Australian, state and territory governments must take a shared and cooperative approach to developing a high-quality and relevant Australian education evidence base. There are already effective arrangements for monitoring and performance reporting. With respect to implementing the bottom-up capability, governments should:
  • put in place a new Education Agreement (building on previous agreements) that defines the objectives of, and framework for, commissioning and applying evaluative research about what works best
  • assign an institution to be responsible for the implementation of the evaluative research framework, which is accountable to, and funded by, all governments
  • specify the assigned institution's governance arrangements, functions and operations.

Governments need to lift the bonnet on Australia's schools

The path to better education outcomes lies in strengthening the capability to identify and evaluate the policies, programs and teaching practices that work best, for whom and in what circumstances, and applying this across the nation's school systems, says a Productivity Commission draft report released today.

'There has been a 14 per cent real increase in spending per student over the last ten years, yet student performance remains broadly static and in some areas has actually decreased. More resources, performance benchmarking and competition between schools alone, although important, are insufficient to achieve gains in education outcomes' said Commissioner Jonathan Coppel.

The Commission's draft report says there is a lot of data collected to monitor and report on the outcomes of students and schools. But, there is relatively little evidence or systematic processes in place to evaluate policies, program and teaching practices to identify what works best in schools and early learning centres.

'Teachers have the greatest impact on student performance, after accounting for the characteristics of students themselves. Looking within the classroom, particularly teaching practices, is thus paramount to improving education outcomes across all schools and all students,' said Commissioner Jonathan Coppel.

'We also know there are some schools whose students perform better than expected compared with similar schools. We should be lifting the bonnet on these schools to find out what they are doing, and carefully evaluating if we can apply their methods across schools,' added Commissioner Coppel.

The Commission's draft report sets out the capabilities that governments need to drive the creation and use of a national education evidence base. It is recommending that the Australian, state and territory governments take a shared approach to developing a high quality and relevant national education evidence base, and calls for a new Education Agreement (which builds on existing agreements) that defines the objectives and assigns an institution responsible for its implementation.

The Commission said that they will further investigate introducing a national unique school identifier for children and whether the benefits would outweigh compliance costs.

'We are not looking to add to the compliance burden of educators. In fact, our report makes recommendations for reducing the existing burden by collecting data more cost-effectively and also making better use of existing data,' said Productivity Commissioner Julie Abramson.

The Commission is also recommending changes to privacy and other legislation to facilitate access to and sharing of de-identified administrative data essential for the evaluation of what works best in schools and early learning centres.

The Productivity Commission invites submissions on its draft report and will be holding public hearings. Details can be found at: www.pc.gov.au/inquiries/current/education-evidence

Download the infographic

• High resolution - Education Evidence Base (PDF - 4919 Kb)

Lifting the bonnet on Australia's schools (Text version of infographic)

Looking into further development of the national evidence base for early childhood and school education.

Over the last 10 years, government spending has increased 24% across Australian Schools and 14% per student.

But, performance of students remains static...

[Two images showing flat lines for Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 student scores for both reading and numeracy between 2008 and 2016]

Looking within the classroom is paramount to improving education outcomes for all students.

Aftrer accounting for student characteristics, teachers have the greatest impact on student performance.

A National Education Evidence Base

The aim is to evaluate what works best, for whom and in which circumstances and create information to support decision makers at all levels...

Children and Families, Teachers, Schools and Governments

...and drive continuous improvements.

Read the draft report and/or make a submission.