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Dean Ashenden

Dean Ashenden has been a consultant and adviser to schools and school systems in every state and territory and at the national level. He is an Honorary Senior Fellow at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education.

Essays & reportage Dean Ashenden 10 December 2024 A taken-for-granted is being questioned at last, with implications in education and elsewhere
National affairs Dean Ashenden 24 October 2024 Labor’s “national approach” to schooling has failed. It’s time for a rethink Books & arts Dean Ashenden 17 October 2024 Two sociologists and a teacher wrestle with meritocracy Essays & reportage Dean Ashenden 10 October 2024 As the first anniversary of the Voice vote approaches, should we be thinking differently about truth-telling? National affairs Dean Ashenden 27 September 2024 The Monthly and the Saturday Paper are campaigning for fairer school funding. But are they missing the deeper story?
Essays & reportage Dean Ashenden 10 July 2024 Vilified for his “exhibitionist ecclesiastical activism,” an Italian priest created a fertile place of learning
Books & arts Dean Ashenden 14 June 2024 Money might bestow enormous power, but is the triumph of the wealthy complete? Essays & reportage Dean Ashenden 25 March 2024 A different kind of school reform is needed — reform of governance, the sector system and the daily work of students and teachers Essays & reportage Dean Ashenden 15 November 2022 How a journey north from Adelaide led to Telling Tennant’s Story, the 2022 Political Book of the Year Essays & reportage Dean Ashenden 19 October 2022 Three new Productivity Commission reports highlight big problems in schooling and school reform — and in the commission’s own thinking
Books & arts Dean Ashenden 27 September 2022 Does sport have anything to teach Australian schools?
National affairs Dean Ashenden 6 September 2022 The education revolution failed — and so did its way of thinking Books & arts Dean Ashenden 12 November 2021 A new analysis of Australian education provides clues as to what’s gone wrong National affairs Dean Ashenden 9 April 2020 A new settlement might just appeal to Coalition supporters, and to Labor’s Books & arts Dean Ashenden 3 December 2019 Another bad PISA report suggests that Australia has not learned the basic lesson: school reform won’t work in the absence of major structural change
National affairs Dean Ashenden 15 January 2019 It’s time for the AWM to rethink its attitude to the frontier wars. But that means its critics, and the Labor Party, need to change tack too
National affairs Dean Ashenden 5 November 2018 Like the Australian War Memorial itself, many of its critics share a fundamental blind spot National affairs Dean Ashenden 4 May 2018 The latest Gonski report points a way to the future of school reform, but has not broken with its disastrous past National affairs Dean Ashenden 5 March 2018 Labor’s shadow education minister faces the problem of working out why school reform has failed, and what a federal education minister could do about it Books & arts Dean Ashenden 24 January 2018 Books | A senior vice-chancellor argues for big changes in tertiary education — but not in universities
National affairs Dean Ashenden 9 November 2017 How can money make an educational difference? In his submission to the second Gonski review, Dean Ashenden offered some suggestions
National affairs Dean Ashenden 12 May 2017 After a forty-year detour, are we heading towards a plan envisaged in 1973? National affairs Dean Ashenden 4 May 2017 A successful Gonski version 2 is essential – but far from sufficient – for genuine school reform National affairs Dean Ashenden 28 September 2016 Federal minister Simon Birmingham has fired the first shots in the latest battle of the school funding wars. Here’s our short guide to the terrain From the archive Dean Ashenden 28 July 2016 We’re still living with the legacy of Labor’s decision to support public funding of non-government schools
Essays & reportage Dean Ashenden 15 June 2016 Credentialism has distorted the direction and basis of half a century’s education and training policy, argues Dean Ashenden
National affairs Dean Ashenden 24 September 2015 Don’t be surprised if the Coalition embraces an updated Gonski plan for school funding, writes Dean Ashenden Essays & reportage Dean Ashenden 24 June 2015 Dean Ashenden takes on the sixties, GERM, and the world’s best-known educational revolutionary National affairs Dean Ashenden 22 February 2015 Christopher Pyne’s teacher education review wants serious reform, but it may serve to protect the monopoly that produced the problems, writes Dean Ashenden Books & arts Dean Ashenden 12 February 2015 Books | An American polemic about Chinese schools and OECD league tables exposes problems closer to home, argues Dean Ashenden