‘A quality education always starts with a great teacher’. In her final column of the year, Julia Gillard shares details of some of the programs aimed at improving the recruitment, training and support of teachers in developing nations.

Much discussion of evidence-based teaching is based on a narrow definition that would benefit from a broader recognition of the role of evidence in teaching and learning, Professor Geoff Masters AO writes in his latest Teacher column.

There are still many children who live in a world where even the most basic of school infrastructure does not exist. In her latest column, Julia Gillard shares how the Global Partnership for Education is helping to get infrastructure and supplies to schools in conflict-affected countries – from classroom furniture in Yemen to handwashing stations in Sierra Leone.

The increasing number of children enrolled into primary schools globally show there is great progress being made to improve the quality of education, Julia Gillard writes. Despite these achievements, there is still one group being left behind from all this progress: children with disabilities.

Quality early grade reading is a key focus for the Global Partnership for Education. In her latest Teacher column, Julia Gillard explains how hundreds of millions of children around the world are denied the opportunity to learn to read, and shares how a focus on improving reading standards in Nepal is changing lives for the better.

Online assessments are capable of providing significantly improved feedback to teaching and learning. Experience in schools is demonstrating the potential of online assessment – provided the foundations are right.

Some Australian schools and school systems have seen greater improvements in NAPLAN results than others. How well do we understand where improvements are occurring and why? Professor Geoff Masters AO discusses.

In his first quarterly column for Teacher, Andreas Schleicher, Director of the OECD's Directorate for Education and Skills explores the long-term consequences of students’ poor performance and how this could lead to further disengagement from school.

One of the biggest challenges we face in improving quality and equity in our schools is to better address the learning needs of the many children who, on entry to school, are at risk of being locked into trajectories of long-term low achievement, writes Professor Geoff Masters AO.

Real reform and significant progress in improving the quality and equity of Australian schooling depend on tackling our deepest and most stubborn educational challenges, writes Professor Geoff Masters AO.