The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the vulnerabilities and inequalities of national education systems and hindered the education of millions of children globally. In response, the Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Centre, which is a long-term, strategic partnership between the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) and the…

The 2018 International Graduates Outcomes Survey (IGOS) provides an insight into international graduates from Australian universities post-study employment, work readiness, and reflections on course experiences, study motivation and overall satisfaction. Over 10,000 international students who graduated from an Australian university in the last…

Australian STEM education seems caught in a whirlpool of problems that are contributing to one another. Student engagement and performance in STEM are declining, but we do not have the supply of qualified teachers we need to improve learning. The STEM curriculum is unbalanced and fragmented, leading to less interest among students. It is not…

In 2012, the Ministry of Education, Afghanistan, engaged the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) as a partner to support the development of a national learning assessment program in Afghanistan. To achieve this goal, the Learning Assessment unit of the Ministry of Education and ACER have collaborated to design and implement the…

Australian Education Review (AER) 55 explores the goals of Australian education and of how schools should prepare young people for work and life. Section 1 provides an overview, discussing the nature of broad social and economic changes over the last 20 years, and their implications for the goals of Australian education systems today and for the…

This technical paper examines the issue of attrition bias in two cohorts of the Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth (LSAY), based on an analysis using data from 1995 to 2002. Data up to 2002 provided eight years of information on members of the Y95 cohort and five years of information on members of the Y98 cohort. This study suggests that…

The data for this "Briefing" are from the 1995 cohort of the Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth (LSAY). The findings reported here are from three recent LSAY research reports, which are listed at the end of this "Briefing". The cohort comprises young people who were in Year 9 at school in 1995. Data in this…

Vocational education and training (VET) represents one of the most significant reforms to the senior secondary curriculum in Australian schools over recent decades. Introduced to expand curricular options and provide work-based training and qualifications, the numbers of students participating in VET have more than trebled since the mid-1990s.…

This report examines the pathways of recent school leavers who enter the higher education sector in Australia. The focus is on the first three years after completing senior secondary school. The report has four broad aims: (1) to provide estimates of the proportions of entrants who change courses or leave the higher education sector before…

"Research Highlights" is an annual publication documenting developments in the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER)'s research programs for the previous year. The 2005 edition highlights research on the following themes: (1) Improving outcomes for Indigenous students; (2) Understanding transitions from school to adulthood;…

This review has been prepared by the Australian Council for Educational research (ACER) under an Agreement with the Australian Government Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST). It is one component of a project to investigate effective third wave intervention strategies for students and learning difficulties that persist beyond the…

In 2000, Australia took part in the inaugural OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Approximately 500 Australian Indigenous students were assessed in PISA, providing a representative sample of the 15-year-old Indigenous population. This report presents the analysis of…

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is an initiative of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in Paris. The overall aim of PISA is to measure how well 15-year-olds approaching the end of their compulsory schooling are prepared for meeting the challenges they will face in their lives beyond school.…

This review calls for change. Over the last two decades, a plethora of government policies have been developed to improve the educational outcomes of Indigenous students. These policies have, as yet, failed to reduce significantly the gap between the educational achievements of Indigenous and non-Indigenous students in Australia. This review…

"Research Highlights" is an annual publication documenting developments in the Australian Council for Educational Research's (ACER's) research programs for the previous year. The 2003 edition highlights research on the following themes: (1) Australian students excel in international study; (2) Assessing the moral and ethical outcomes of…