Media Releases
Posted on 30 June 2009 at 03:19PM
The Queensland Government announced on 29 June that it had accepted all five key recommendations from a review of the state’s primary school education conducted by ACER’s chief executive, Professor Geoff Masters.
Professor Masters made the recommendations in a report, A Shared Challenge: Improving Literacy, Numeracy and Science Learning in Queensland Primary Schools, which was delivered to the Queensland Government in late April.
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Full report available on Queensland Government website
Posted on 30 June 2009 at 03:06PM
Meaningful feedback on student engagement in higher education can be used to help institutions to attract and retain students and support students’ learning, education experts will tell the 2009 Student Engagement Forum this week.
The Forum, to be hosted by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) and La Trobe University in Melbourne on Thursday, will feature keynote speaker Indiana University’s Professor George Kuh, the Founding Director of the United States’ National Survey of Student Engagement.
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Posted on 29 June 2009 at 05:04PM
Australia must avoid the allure of simple but potentially misleading approaches to comparing the performances of schools, according to the chief executive of the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER), Professor Geoff Masters.
Speaking in Sydney ahead of the first in a series of nation-wide seminars for school leaders on the use of student achievement data, Professor Masters said Australia had the opportunity to learn from overseas experience and avoid simple but problematic approaches to the construction of school league tables.
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Posted on 17 June 2009 at 12:01PM
University students who live on campus are more engaged, feel more supported, and have better general development, according to the latest briefing paper from the Australasian Survey of Student Engagement (AUSSE).
More than 25,000 students from 29 Australian and New Zealand universities participated in the latest cycle of the AUSSE. About nine per cent of the Australian students surveyed indicated that they lived on campus in a university college or hall of residence.
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Posted on 06 May 2009 at 11:54AM
Men are more likely than women to gain highly-paid, full-time work after completing university, according to a new study conducted by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER).
The Graduate Pathways Survey, conducted by ACER for the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, canvassed more than 9,000 bachelor degree graduates five years into their careers.
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Visit Graduate Pathways Survey homepage http://www.acer.edu.au/gps
Posted on 24 April 2009 at 03:10PM
A third of Australian and New Zealand tertiary students seriously consider leaving their institutions before graduation, according to results from a new study of student engagement released today by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER).
A representative sample of more than 25,000 students from 29 Australian and New Zealand universities participated in the latest cycle of the Australasian Survey of Student Engagement (AUSSE), conducted in 2008 – the largest and most advanced survey of its kind.
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Posted on 24 March 2009 at 02:36PM
Early years education systems must focus on effective teaching and learning strategies and improving staff qualifications to ensure successful outcomes for all children, Professor Collette Tayler will tell educators in a series of seminars for the Australian Council for Educational Research in March and April.
Professor Tayler, Chair of Early Childhood Education and Care in the University of Melbourne Graduate School of Education, will stress that in terms of the overall education debate, nothing matters more, or has more long term impact on education outcomes, than the provision of quality education in the early years.
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More information on Early Learning State Conferences
Posted on 24 March 2009 at 02:25PM
Early childhood learning and school systems should promote young children’s cognitive as well as social and emotional development and focus on improving transitions for young children, UK early childhood learning expert Professor Iram Siraj-Blatchford will tell educators in a series of seminars for the Australian Council for Educational Research in March and April.
“Young children are learning all the time, and however implicit or hidden it may be, the content of this learning – the curriculum – is determined by the adults who care for them,” says Siraj-Blatchford, who is a Professor of Early Childhood Education at the University of London and President of the British Association for Early Childhood Education.
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More information on Early Learning State Conferences
Posted on 18 March 2009 at 10:26AM
ACER has been awarded Employer of Choice for Women status by the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency (EOWA). ACER is one of 111 Australian employers to receive the citation today.
ACER was awarded the citation on the basis of its existing policies and practices that were shown to support women across the organisation and have a positive outcome for both women and the business.
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Read the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency media release on the EOWA website
Posted on 10 March 2009 at 05:02PM
Everyone agrees that schools should be preparing all young people to be lifelong learners – but, Professor Guy Claxton wants to know, what does lifelong learning mean to a 37-year-old hairdresser in Bacchus Marsh?
UK education expert, professor of learning sciences and co-director of the Centre for Real-World Learning at the University of Winchester, Professor Claxton will bring his brand of “real-world learning” to Australia for a seminar hosted by the Australian Council for Educational Research in
March.
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Posted on 16 February 2009 at 03:32PM
Education systems must overcome ‘biological social determinism’ to focus on student learning, Professor Steve Dinham of the Australian Council for Educational Research will tell education leaders in a series of seminars next week.
“Many people today, including practicing teachers, still subscribe, consciously or subconsciously, to various forms of biological social determinism, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary,” says Professor Dinham, Research Director of ACER’s Teaching, Learning and Leadership research program.
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Posted on 16 February 2009 at 03:18PM
The Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) is mourning the loss of Dr Ken Rowe who died in Victoria’s recent bushfires. Dr Rowe was alone at his family’s property in Marysville when the town was devastated by fire.
“Ken’s loss is being deeply felt not only by colleagues at ACER where he had worked for eight years, but across the entire education community,” said ACER Chief Executive Professor Geoff Masters. “We are all simply devastated by this awful news.”
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Posted on 20 January 2009 at 09:16AM
Social background plays only a small role in accounting for differences in occupational status and earnings at age 24, indicating that education is enhancing social mobility, a recent Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) study found.
The study, released today, found that, in general, post-school education and training leads to higher status occupations and higher earnings, compared to not doing any further study or training.
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The Occupations and Earnings of Young Australians: The role of education and training
(LSAY Research Report No 55), November 2008 Gary N. Marks
See LSAY Research for other LSAY reports
Posted on 14 January 2009 at 12:37PM
An approach that measures educational ‘outputs’ through student, school and teacher assessment is needed to ensure accountability in the education system, says a new paper from the Australian Council for Educational Research.
The paper, Output Measurement in Education, by ACER Principal Research Fellow Dr Andrew Dowling, is the latest in a series of policy papers released by ACER.
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Posted on 13 January 2009 at 11:43AM
Staff of the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) have been saddened by the passing of former Chair of the ACER Council, Professor Peter Karmel, AC, who died on 30 December at the age of 86.
Professor Karmel played a very significant role in the history and development of ACER. He was a member of ACER Council for more than 30 years, from 1968 to 1999, and Chair of the Council from 1979 to 1999.
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Posted on 09 January 2009 at 04:37PM
The Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) has been contracted to conduct stage two of the Federal Government’s pilot National Student Aptitude Test for Tertiary Admission (SATTA). ACER will supply uniTEST for 2009 and 2010 entry.
Four universities are using uniTEST in 2009. Flinders University conducts its test session today with The Australian National University to conduct its test session on Monday. Macquarie University and the University of Ballarat recently held test sessions. Enquiries have been received from a number of other universities considering the program for 2010 entry.
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