October 12, 2016

Productivity Commission Inquiry into the Education Evidence Base

The Australian Government's draft report on the Productivity Commission Inquiry into the Education Evidence Base has been released recently and is found here. I was involved in the Speech Pathology Australia (SPA) submission, and RIPPLE also made a submission.
Both of these submissions were quoted extensively within the report. Here is how Speech Pathology Australia wrote about the report to its membership today:
The Productivity Commission has released its draft report into the Inquiry into the Education Evidence Base. A key conclusion made by the Commission was one we emphasised in the SPA submission - that there is a large gap in the evaluation of policies, programs and teaching practices in Australian schools and early childhood services to identify what works best, for whom and in what circumstances. Of note, our submission was quoted in the report on numerous occasions in relation to distinguishing between 'data and evidence', gaps in data on early learning outcomes, the evaluation and evidence of 'what works', improving data collection and processing and data linkage. Thank you to the members who contributed their expertise to the development of the SPA submission to this Inquiry.
Speech Pathology Australia submissions on this and many other topics are available here. It is pleasing to see our research informing conversations with the government.