Evidence for Learning: Submission to the Review to Inform a Better and Fairer Education System

Submission to the Review to Inform a Better and Fairer Education System

SVA’s submission to the Review to Inform a Better and Fairer Education System.

Summary

In July 2023, the Expert Panel for the Review to Inform a Better and Fairer Education System invited stakeholders to make a submission to the National School Reform Agreement (NSRA) Consultation Paper outlining some of the key challenges and opportunities facing the Australian education system.

Social Ventures Australia (SVA) made a submission as part of this process based on SVA’s experience working on multiple school education and early years programs and initiatives, including Evidence for Learning (E4L).

SVA’s submission comprises two parts:

Part 1: The next generation of evidence mobilisation and collaborative networking

SVA recommends using multiple policy levers to steer all participants in the system towards high-quality evidence use. SVA’s submission outlines four initiatives that could give more ownership to educators on evidence generation and mobilisation, based on the experience of E4L and E4L’s global partners:

  • A school innovation fund (with supporting infrastructure) to support schools to engage with high quality evidence generation of promising programs and initiatives with potential to scale
  • Stronger collaborative networks to support educators to share evidence and build capability
  • Better stewardship of the evidence ecosystem by government
  • Creation of an evidence guardian’ to improve the quality of investment by schools.

Part 2: Responses to questions from the Consultation Paper

In this section SVA shares information and analysis that may be useful to the panel in considering some of the specific issues raised in the Consultation Paper. This section includes insights from E4L’s systematic reviews of student health and wellbeing, and of teacher recruitment and retention; and E4L’s experience with evaluation of school programs and initiatives.

We invite you to read the full submission on SVA’s website.

Authors

Social Ventures Australia