TJ Ryan Foundation Research Associate, Dean Ashenden, writes in Inside Story (9.11.17) about his submission to the second federal Gonski review, offering suggestions to the question, ‘How can money make an educational difference?’
‘The issues paper released in September by the Review to Achieve Educational Excellence in Australian Schools began with an undertaking to “focus on practical measures that work,” but continued to pose much broader questions. What should success for schools and students look like? How can funding be better used at the school or classroom level? How can we support ongoing improvement? What are the barriers to that improvement? What institutional or governance arrangements should be put in place?
‘My submission to the review accepted that “practical measures,” readily undertaken in schools, have a part to play. It also argued that such measures will succeed only to the extent that the review panel can find good answers to its wider questions.
‘… The review should see its recommendations on specific “practical measures that work” within the larger task of developing a more productive grammar of schooling, and of moving that grammar from the margins to the mainstream.’
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