The National Assessment Program for Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) is intended to assess all Australian students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 to ensure equity and inclusion. This paper explores the extent to which equity and inclusion are achieved for students with disability through NAPLAN reporting. Document analysis of publicly accessible NAPLAN…

In Australia, it has been observed that there have been significant declines in the proportion of students studying senior sciences over the last two decades (Commonwealth of Australia 2017 & 2018; Steidtmann et.al, 2023). It has been suggested that one of the causes for this decline could be a link between students' literacy achievement and…

Grouping students into separate classes according to their 'ability' is an inequitable practice that does not, overall, improve academic outcomes. Research has continued to show that class ability grouping widens the educational gap between students from disadvantaged and privileged backgrounds. PISA data analysis suggests that class ability…

The middle-school years (Year 7 to Year 9) is a particular challenge for socially disadvantaged populations, with high proportions of children either repeating school years or dropping out of school. In Australia, a group of particular concern is First Nations children for whom there is a collective effort by all governments to improve education…

Students' prior achievements in school have significant correlations with their later achievements. Specifically, students' prior numeracy achievement is the most important predictor of later numeracy success. However, the assessment of this predictor across gender and its trend across students' year levels is often overlooked or not adequately…

This study sought to determine the factors that motivate teachers to differentiate curriculum for gifted students in a case study school in Victoria, Australia. For this purpose, 10 teachers from Year 7-9 mixed ability classes at the school were engaged in interviews about their practice of differentiation specifically for gifted students and the…

This study investigated school connectedness, student engagement, academic grades, and student affect. Factor analyses of 331 adolescent students (Years 7, 9, and 11 in Australia), validated a four-factor model of school engagement. The factors revealed in the analyses were described as (1) future and task focus, (2) planning and motivation, (3)…

Achieving Sustainable Development Goal 4 is underpinned by the provision of quality inclusive education for all young persons, including persons with disabilities. The universal design for learning (UDL) framework provides the basis for establishing an inclusive pedagogical learning environment in classrooms. However, implementing such an…

Making connections within and between different aspects of mathematics is recognised as fundamental to learning mathematics with understanding. However, exactly what these connections are and how they serve the goal of learning mathematics is rarely made explicit in curriculum documents with the result that mathematics tends to be presented as a…

Relative age effects (RAEs), where older children within an age-based group have better academic, sporting, self-concept and mental health outcomes than their younger peers, have been demonstrated in multiple countries. Australian research has found self-concept and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder RAEs, but academic RAEs have not been…

Children's right to participate, at least in rhetoric, is well recognised, but what this means and the associated benefits in schools are less clear. This article synthesises findings of a large mixed-methods Australian study comprising policy analysis, qualitative interviews with students, teachers and policymakers, and the development of a…

While completing a science test and science survey, 155 high school students wore a biometric wristband (measuring electrodermal activity; EDA) and self-reported their science self-efficacy and science anxiety. Adopting a challenge-threat appraisal perspective and latent profile analysis, we explored how students were psychologically…

A higher proportion of students are privately educated in Australia, compared with many other nations. In this paper, we tested the assumption that private schools offer better quality education than public schools. We examined differences in student achievement on the National Assessment Programme: Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) between public,…

The increasing influx into Australia of (im)migrants whose first language is not English has made Australia linguistically more diverse than ever. Despite this, Australia remains a strongly Anglocentric nation, and migrants, in response, tend to abandon their heritage languages (HL) and shift to English relatively quickly. Korean migrants in…

This study examined the extent to which boys fell into clusters comprised of different levels of motivations and costs. In turn, the antecedents of these clusters and associations with engagement and wellbeing outcomes were considered. Based on survey responses from 168 students across Years 5, 7 and 9 from an all-boys' school in Sydney,…