Our Work

Featured reports

Fixing the hole in Australian education: The Australian Curriculum benchmarked against the best

Learning First has conducted the first detailed benchmarking of the content of the Australian science curriculum against several high-performing and comparable systems around the world. Download the full report here and the short report here.

What we teach matters: How quality curriculum improves student outcomes.

This report written in collaboration with Dr David Steiner, Executive Director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy, sets out the evidence that quality curriculum matters to student achievement.

Preparing to lead: Lessons in principal development from high-performing education systems.

In recent decades school systems have spent huge sums on leadership courses for aspiring principals, but they have not got the value they need. This report, commissioned by the National Center on Education and the Economy, shows how four of the world’s highest-performing systems in PISA tests – Ontario, Singapore, Shanghai and Hong Kong – have developed leadership training that uses deep knowledge of their individual system to prepare aspiring principals. Download the country briefs here.

Australia’s Primary Challenge: How to lift teacher quality in the early school years Australian edition.

This report shows how four of the world’s highest-performing school systems – Hong Kong, Japan, Finland, and Shanghai – place a strong emphasis on teacher subject expertise, even in early year schooling. In these and other systems, the most effective teachers do not just know their subjects (content knowledge) they also how to teach them (pedagogical content knowledge). Acquiring both forms of knowledge is more important and more difficult than many people realise. This report was commissioned by the National Center on Education and the Economy – the original report is available here, along with tools and appendices.

Beyond PD: Teacher professional learning in high-performance systems Australian edition.

We spend millions of dollars on teacher professional development, but it’s not having the desired impact on our kids’ learning. But in some systems it is working. This report shows how British Columbia, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Singapore improve teaching in schools. Why is professional learning having an impact in these systems? What are the steps other systems can take to refine their improvement strategies? This report was commissioned by the National Center on Education and the Economy – the original report is available here along with related materials and tools.