Priority-setting is a collective responsibility centred around inclusive engagement and alignment with the needs and desired outcomes of the community. In this study, we leveraged the collective expertise of stakeholders from the child and family service system, to identify priorities for supporting the health, education and wellbeing of children…

All Australian children and their families have an equal right to access quality early years education. To achieve this, rationalisation of the Australian early childhood (EC) sector in 2007 saw the introduction of mandated governing frameworks, including the National Quality Framework (NQF), designed to regulate and assure quality practices…

A new look at children from the world's richest countries offers a mixed picture of their health, skills and happiness. For far too many, issues such as poverty, exclusion and pollution threaten their mental well-being, physical health and opportunities to develop skills. Even countries with good social, economic and environmental conditions are a…

This occasional paper is the seventh in a series on the National Quality Framework (NQF). It explores the quality of children's education and care services based on the socio-economic status of the area in which they are situated. The Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas (SEIFA) Index of Relative Socio-Economic Advantage and Disadvantage (IRSAD) is…

This article revisits debates about inclusive education from the perspective of the "Keeping Connected" project, a qualitative longitudinal research project focusing on young people with health-related disrupted experiences of schooling. Drawing on findings from this project, three main arguments are advanced and illustrated in relation…

Issue 4 of the Australian Council for Educational Research's (ACER's) "Policy Insights" series commences with a synthesis of publicly available data on school attendance by Indigenous Australians, highlighting areas of major risk. It explores Australian and international literature to develop an understanding of the risk factors and…

This report summarises evidence on progress towards the seven Closing the Gap targets agreed to by the Council of Australian Governments (COAG), along with an analysis of the underlying key drivers of change. The COAG targets are set out in the National Indigenous Reform Agreement (NIRA) between the Australian Government and the state and…

This paper critically analyzes a community collaborative approach for implementing Health and Physical Education (HPE) lessons within Gippsland primary schools (Victoria, Australia). The rural community collaborations reflected upon are embedded within the Victorian Department of Education and Early Childhood Development (DEECD) "School…

This paper and the four commissioned works on which it is based are guided by the important question: How can we start valuing practices and outcomes of teaching and learning that are difficult to reduce to numbers? As the process of developing indicators for the Post-2015 education targets unfolds, some of the targets are at risk of being dropped…

The purpose of this paper is to review recent developments related to the development of indicators of educational progress in the context of the Post 2015 deliberations to generate a new international architecture for educational investment through to 2030. There have been a plethora of suggestions and several parallel consultation processes…

This report reviews the conceptual debates and existing data sources that relate to three ambiguous and controversial targets included in the post-2015 education framework: Relevant Learning Outcomes; Knowledge, Skills, Values, and Attitudes (for education for global citizenship and sustainable development); and Teachers and Safe, Inclusive, and…

Whether in health, in education, or in material well-being, some children will always fall behind the average. The critical question is -- how far behind? Is there a point beyond which falling behind is not inevitable but policy susceptible, not unavoidable but unacceptable, not inequality but inequity? There are no widely agreed theoretical…

Volume II of the Biennial Survey of Education, 1916-1918 includes the following chapters: (1) Education in Great Britain and Ireland (I. L. Kandel); (2) Education in parts of the British Empire: Educational Developments in the Dominion of Canada (Walter A. Montgomery), Public School System of Jamaica (Charles A. Asbury), Recent Progress of…

The late 20th Century saw the rapid rise of quality assurance and effectiveness measures in most industries and organisations. These trends were very much reflected in education at all levels. An associated emergent trend in primary and secondary education in Australia was growth in the use of standardised measures of student achievement that…