Making the grade: benchmarking performance in Australian schooling

Abstract

The Industry Commission review of service provrsion in school education has the potential to improve the quality of information available for the monitoring and reporting of school performance. If the Industry Commission review is adequately to address issues of school effectiveness, it should avoid the tendency of previous efficiency reviews to focus on financial data to the exclusion of data on student achievement. This paper suggests how the Industry Commission should approach this task, recognising the lack of comparative data available on the outcomes of Australian schooling. Show more