In the lead up to the 2022 federal election, our team members Jill Blackmore, Amanda Keddie and Katrina MacDonald offered some thoughts on the misrecognition of 'problems' in Australian public education published on the Australian Association for Research in Education blog: EduResearch Matters:
Education has been politicised over the last three decades, yet it has not been a key feature of the current election campaign. To be sure, we have heard public statements from Federal Education Minister (acting) Stuart Robert about ‘dud’ teachers in our public education system as well as his approval of increasing student demand for private sector schooling. Amid both parties’ support for parental choice in education and concerns about Australia’s under-performance on standardised international and national tests such as PISA and NAPLAN, the focus in this election campaign has largely been on how teacher quality might be improved through attracting and retaining better teachers. While quality teaching is important, this focus misrecognises the ‘problems’ of Australian education in a number of ways....