Literacy is a core set of skills that can help students overcome social and economic barriers and underpin success in everyday life. Tanya Vaughan and Susannah Schoeffel share recommendations for the development of good literacy skills among primary students.

Due to the disruption to education caused by COVID-19, school leaders and teachers are considering how best to meet curriculum and assessment requirements for the rest of the 2020 school year. Here, we look at the official advice given to educators across the country on where some flexibility would be appropriate.

It’s often asserted that some things can’t be measured, Professor Geoff Masters AO writes in his latest column. But how true is this? And if we can’t measure something, should we stop pretending we can teach or develop it?

In any given classroom, students are likely to be at very different points in their learning and development. Professor Geoff Masters AO explores why it is important for teachers to be able to track the long-term progress that each student makes.

School improvement is most likely when an entire school has a shared improvement agenda and is committed to learning how to improve. Professor Geoff Masters AO discusses a five-step improvement cycle.

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.

It’s a popular idea – educational assessments are either ‘summative’ assessments of learning or ‘formative’ assessments for learning. But just how fundamental is this distinction? And is it truly useful?

Professor Geoff Masters discusses several practices that he would advance are part of the generic ‘essence’ of effective teaching.

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?

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?