Columnists articles

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Assessing end-of-school attainment
Assessing end-of-school attainment

Is there a ‘best’ way to establish the levels of knowledge, understanding and skill that students have attained in a subject by the end of Year 12?

Achieving high standards by starting from current performance
Achieving high standards by starting from current performance

A commonly proposed strategy for raising achievement levels in schools is to specify high expectations or ‘standards’ of student performance and to hold students, teachers and schools accountable for achieving those standards. On the surface, it seems like an eminently sensible strategy. But is it?

Incentives - an ineffective school improvement strategy?
Incentives - an ineffective school improvement strategy?

By the turn of the century, the observation had been made in many countries that substantial increases in expenditure on schools had failed to deliver measurable improvements in student performance. But just how effective are incentives as an improvement strategy?