The education revolution is finally here

Here’s a piece of mine on the University of Melbourne’s 2010 Federal election blog, which gathers commentary and analysis from academics and postgraduate students.

This week Prime Minister Gillard announced a suite of radical policies that will do far more to improve student learning than any school hall or national curriculum ever could.  Performance bonuses for teachers and schools; Teach Next, which moves passionate professionals into teaching careers; and an Australian Baccalaureate to complement state high school certificates. Combined with earlier initiatives such as the MySchool website which compares school performance and profiles across the country; and last week’s promise to hand more power back to principals and parents, we have a real revolution.  Not just of schooling policy, but Labor policy….

Read the rest of this piece here, or my commentary on earlier education proposals here.

Unleashed opinion on Labor’s school empowerment policy

My contribution to the election policy debate was published on the ABC’s Drum Unleashed website.

I show that the Prime Minister’s proposal is a good one, giving schools around the country a taste of Victorian schools have had for almost a decade – the power to govern themselves.  I argue that the ability to innovate and transfer successful policies such as this is a virtue of federalism that we should enhance.

New perspectives on Australian federalism and school funding

With major reforms and reviews of Australia’s intergovernmental relations and school funding currently underway, the need to understand these complex areas and re-examine common assumptions has never been greater.

I’ll be presenting my recent findings on these contested and interrelated subjects at the upcoming Australian Political Science Association’s Annual Conference: “Connected Globe: Conflicting Worlds”.  My first paper “The evolution of school funding settlements in Australian and the United States: Intergovernmental perspectives” is the first academic paper comparing the two countries’ school finance from this perspective, and is based upon fieldwork and interviews undertaken during my Visiting Scholar position at Columbia University in New York.  My second paper, “Australian federalism and school funding: Exploring the nexus in Victoria’s devolution reforms”, presents a critique of common perceptions and normative models of federalism and policy reform.  Both papers are based on extensive original research and offer insights for policymakers and academics alike.

The APSA conference is being held 27-29 September at the University of Melbourne.  Click here for more information.   Don’t forget that you can access my earlier work by clicking on the ‘Publications, presentations and media’ link found in the bottom-right corner of this screen.