The Systemic Inefficiency of Australian Schools: A Policy and Measurement Review

Abstract

Entrenched social inequalities mean that Australia's schooling system is far from achieving the Alice Spring's (Mparntwe) Education Declaration's equity goal. This is associated with Australian schools being among the most socially segregated within the OECD. The Federal government's Productivity Commission has identified that the concentration of disadvantaged students into disadvantaged schools is a systemic inefficiency impeding student learning. In response to the Productivity Commission's findings, the O'Brien Review recommended the tracking and reporting of the socioeconomic diversity of schools and systems. This would require major school accountability reforms to the National Report on Schooling in Australia as it does not report on the associations between school segregation, school composition, and student outcomes. This is due to the Measurement Framework for Schooling in Australia not specifying how to measure school segregation, school socioeconomic context, nor how they relate to schooling outcomes. The next National School Reform Agreement could improve the accountability of governments and schools for student equity groups through the measurement and reporting of systemic barriers to student learning. This article suggests a rage of measures and reporting mechanisms to enable such reforms.