Skip to content
Inside Story
About
Donate
Sign up
Search
Search
Menu
About
Donate
Sign up
Search
Search
schools
Books & Arts
Good story, bad theory
Tom Greenwell
2 June 2023
An enterprising school principal mistakes mastering the system for fixing it
National Affairs
Reimagining choice and competition in schools
Tom Greenwell
19 April 2023
Parental choice or equitable access? There’s a way of reconciling the two
National Affairs
Selective schools, a problem that could become a solution
Chris Bonnor
7 February 2023
The rising number of selective government schools is harming other students. But could those schools become part of a better solution?
Essays & Reportage
Unproductive schooling, counterproductive reform
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
Field of dreams
Dean Ashenden
27 September 2022
Does sport have anything to teach Australian schools?
Books & Arts
Pleasure and intimacy
Alecia Simmonds
12 September 2022
Katrina Marson brings a dual perspective to her argument in favour of comprehensive sex education
National Affairs
Unbeaching the whale
Dean Ashenden
6 September 2022
The education revolution failed — and so did its way of thinking
Books & Arts
Schooling’s Ozymandias
Dean Ashenden
12 November 2021
A new analysis of Australian education provides clues as to what’s gone wrong
Books & Arts
Have I been excommunicated?
Frank Bongiorno
7 August 2021
How a distinguished educator fell victim to church politics and personal enmities
From the archive
Finding the Moree way
Robert Milliken
11 June 2021
Aboriginal people in the town famously visited by the Freedom Ride are taking an innovative approach to their community’s problems
National Affairs
Promoting equity is one thing, achieving it is another
Chris Bonnor
18 February 2021
Good intentions won’t solve the problem of Australia’s increasingly segregated school system
National Affairs
Should private primary schools be free?
Tom Greenwell
11 August 2020
Adrian Piccoli’s plan to fully fund non-government schools would reduce educational inequality
National Affairs
Don’t waste a good crisis, even in schooling
Dean Ashenden
9 April 2020
A new settlement might just appeal to Coalition supporters, and to Labor’s
Essays & Reportage
Why do Canada’s schools outperform Australia’s?
Tom Greenwell
9 April 2020
The success of Canada’s education system can help us rethink our own
Summer season
When private schools go public
Chris Bonnor and Rachel Wilson with Paul Kidson and Tom Greenwell
16 March 2020
No longer can non-government schools be said to be saving taxpayer dollars
From the archive
Less choice, less affordability: the private school subsidy paradox
Tom Greenwell
24 January 2020
The decades-long expansion of public funding to private schools has done the opposite of what its proponents claim
Books & Arts
Consequences, unintended and intended
Janet McCalman
12 December 2019
Books
| Jean Blackburn played a central role in a wave of educational reform
Essays & Reportage
Everyone loses when schools are segregated… but some more than others
Tom Greenwell
9 December 2019
Only fifteen minutes from Parliament House, four Canberra schools reveal the growing segregation in Australian education — and how government policy is at its heart
Books & Arts
What is to be done about Australian schooling?
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
Has NAPLAN failed its most important test?
Tom Greenwell
1 October 2019
Uncertain goals and doubts about effectiveness have prompted a major reappraisal
National Affairs
Peer pressures
Julie Sonnemann and Jonathan Nolan
25 September 2019
Myths about teachers’ pay are derailing the Australian debate
National Affairs
Paying for class in Australia’s schools
Chris Bonnor
1 February 2019
Focusing on local schools is the first step to restoring equity in education
Essays & Reportage
Are we really running schools like factories?
Tom Greenwell
17 January 2019
Gonski called time on Australia’s “industrial” model of “mass education.” But does the diagnosis — and the prescription — reflect classroom reality?
National Affairs
Breakthrough at Bourke
Robert Milliken
11 December 2018
An outback town’s gamble on cutting Indigenous crime is paying remarkable dividends
Essays & Reportage
Revival on the Darling
Robert Milliken
18 September 2018
An outback town finds a way to cut Indigenous crime and imprisonment where governments have failed
Books & Arts
“I don’t believe I left teaching. Teaching left me”
Chris Bonnor
16 August 2018
Books
| As Gabbie Stroud’s memoir shows, reformers will get nowhere if they don’t take teachers with them
National Affairs
Creating child-centred institutions
Jennifer Martin & Matthew Ricketson
28 June 2018
The royal commission has shown how institutions can rebuild their relationships with the children in their care
National Affairs
An end to the industrial model of schooling?
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
Has Gonski stepped outside the square?
Chris Bonnor
20 April 2018
The second Gonski report has been presented to the federal government, and will soon to be made public. Will it back innovative ideas to improve schools — and if it does, will…
National Affairs
What if Goulburn’s Catholic schools were closed again?
Chris Bonnor
28 March 2018
By promising special funding deals for Catholic schools, Labor is reviving the earliest deal-making in the “state aid” battle. What did that compromise actually achieve?
Older posts