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This occasional paper is the ninth in a series on the National Quality Framework (NQF). The Education and Care Services National Law and National Regulations govern the minimum standards and requirements that all providers of NQF regulated services must meet, including health and safety requirements. Quality Area 2 of the National Quality Standard (NQS) upholds children's right to be protected and kept safe. The approved provider, nominated supervisors, coordinators and educators have responsibility for supporting the health, safety and wellbeing of all children. In exercising their responsibilities, they must take reasonable care to protect children from foreseeable risk of harm, injury and infection. This paper uses data from the National Quality Agenda Information Technology System (NQA ITS) to provide analysis of trends in serious incidents resulting in injury, trauma or illness in Australian children's education and care services between 1 April 2020 and 31 March 2022.

We study whether autonomous schools, which are publicly funded but can operate more independently than government-run schools, affect student achievement and school segregation across 15 countries over 16 years. Our triple-differences regressions exploit between-grade variation in the share of students attending autonomous schools within a given country and year. While autonomous schools do not affect overall achievement, effects are positive for high-socioeconomic status students and negative for immigrants. Impacts on segregation mirror these findings, with evidence of increased segregation by socioeconomic and immigrant status. Rather than creating "a rising tide that lifts all boats," autonomous schools increase inequality

Skilling Australia's current and future workforce is the theme for the 32nd National Vocational Education and Training (VET) Research Conference 'No Frills.' In keeping with the conference's theme, this discussion paper explores the resilience of the Australian VET sector and how it can continue to foster adaptability in the face of ongoing change.

Intersectionality highlights that different aspects of individuals' identities are not independent of each other. Instead, they interact to create unique identities and experiences, which cannot be understood by analysing each identity dimension separately or in isolation from their social and historical contexts. Intersectional approaches in this way question the common classification of individuals into groups (male vs. female, immigrant vs. native etc.), which raises important implications for the policy-making process. In education, analyses with an intersectional lens have the potential to lead to better tailored and more effective policies and interventions related to participation, learning outcomes, students' attitudes towards the future, identification of needs, and socio-emotional well-being. Consequently, as elaborated in this paper, some countries have adjusted their policies in the areas of governance, resourcing, developing capacity, promoting school-level interventions and monitoring, to account for intersectionality. Gaps and challenges related to intersectional approaches are also highlighted.

Module A of the OECD Higher Education Policy Survey (HEPS) 2022 elicited information on policies to promote digitalisation of higher education in OECD member and accession countries. In total, 30 jurisdictions responded, providing comparative information on various areas of digitalisation policy, from regulation and governance to financial and human resources. The survey results provide insight into the role of public authorities in guiding, coordinating and resourcing the digital transformation of higher education institutions. The analysis and comparative tables in this working paper provide insights that can support the development of strategic digitalisation policies.

Calls for increased monitoring and evaluation of education policies and practices have not, so far, included widespread and consistent assessments of the inclusiveness of education settings. Measuring inclusion in education has proven to be a challenging exercise, due not only to the complexity and different uses of the concept, but also to its holistic nature. Indeed, measuring inclusion implies analysing a variety of policy areas within education systems, while also considering the different roles of the system, the school and the classroom. This paper discusses the application of the input-process-outcome model to the measurement of inclusion in education, and key indicators that can be adopted by education systems and schools to this end. It makes considerations relevant to policy makers when designing indicators to measure inclusion, such as the extent of their application, the constraints related to data disaggregation and the relevance of intersectional approaches to inclusion.

This paper provides new evidence on educational inequality and reviews the literature on the causes and consequences of unequal education. We document large achievement gaps between children from different socio-economic backgrounds, show how patterns of educational inequality vary across countries, time, and generations, and establish a link between educational inequality and social mobility. We interpret this evidence from the perspective of economic models of skill acquisition and investment in human capital. The models account for different channels underlying unequal education and highlight how endogenous responses in parents' and children's educational investments generate a close link between economic inequality and educational inequality. Given concerns over the extended school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic, we also summarize early evidence on the impact of the pandemic on children's education and on possible long-run repercussions for educational inequality.

'Transforming the future' can have different connotations in different contexts, but here the author focuses on the way in which the vocational education and training (VET) sector is adapting, anticipating and activating change in response to future skill demands. This discussion paper explores how the sector assists learners to skill, upskill and reskill, which in turn actively contributes to the Australian economy. Without a doubt, the past few years have been both difficult and unpredictable for many, with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and other natural disasters such as bushfires and floods. This paper therefore also considers how the VET system has been able to adapt to these unforeseen events and what can be learnt from these responses and adapted for the future.

This discussion paper has been produced by Australian Children's Education and Care Quality Authority (ACECQA), on behalf of all state and territory governments and the Australian Government, to inform the "2020 Review of the Disability Standards for Education 2005." This paper asks providers of early childhood education and care (ECEC) and school age education and care services across Australia about their awareness and understanding of their obligation sunder the "Disability Discrimination Act 1992" (DDA). This includes questions of access and participation by children with disability to education and care. ACECQA's paper complements the broader discussion paper by the Australian Government about ECEC and the Disability Standards for Education 2005, and is provided in two parts: (1) part 1 is for all ECEC and school age education and care providers; and (2) part 2 asks questions that specifically target National Quality Framework (NQF) approved ECEC and school age education and care providers. [For the broader paper, "Final Report of the 2020 Review of the Disability Standards for Education 2005," see ED617747.]

The National Quality Framework (NQF) was established in 2012 to create a more efficient and cohesive approach to regulating early childhood education and care, and outside school hours care in Australia. The NQF provides a shared vision for governments and the children's education and care sector, and an agreed tool for measuring and monitoring service quality. It sets standards for safety and quality so that all children who attend services regulated under the NQF are supported to have the best start in life. This occasional paper discusses how and why the NQF came about, what has changed in the last 10 years, and future directions.

This paper summarises the exploratory quantitative analysis undertaken to investigate how vocational education and training (VET) students cluster and segment in the Australian VET market. This analysis is outlined in three sections. The first section focuses on 'clustering' as a technique for grouping data and the three clustering algorithms used. These are then discussed in more detail to provide some insights into how they operate. Their specific data requirements, along with their strengths and weaknesses, are also considered. In next section the outputs of the clustering approaches are considered. The resultant clusters are examined to better understand them, and meaningfully label and group them into segments. The final section returns to the raw data. This step was necessary to further explore (in this case, only some of) the identified market segments. Three key market segments are explored: students in targeted English programs; students in social inclusion programs; and migrant students.

Principals (policy makers) have debated the progress in U.S. student performance for a half century or more. Informing these conversations, survey agents have administered seven million psychometrically linked tests in math and reading in 160 waves to national probability samples of selected cohorts born between 1954 and 2007. This study is the first to assess consistency of results by agency. We find results vary by agent, but consistent with Flynn effects, gains are larger in math than reading, except for the most recent period. Non-whites progress at a faster pace. Socio-economically disadvantaged white, black, and Hispanic students make greater progress when tested in elementary school, but that advantage attenuates and reverses itself as students age. We discuss potential moderators.

This paper is the first publication from a project focused on the quality of teaching, learning and assessment practices in the vocational education and training (VET) sector in Australia -- what we understand these to be and how they might be measured. Based on a review of the literature, this paper explores current definitions of quality in VET, the factors that impact on the quality of delivery and the various measures used to make judgements about it.

With the widespread onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Australian universities anticipated a significant loss of students and revenue and hence forecast the need for significant job reductions. Using Higher Education Statistics (HES) data on student numbers and full-time equivalent (FTE) staff by field of study, we explored changes which occurred between 2019 and 2020, this data only becoming publicly available in 2022. Against expectations, and with the exception of the field of study of Management and Commerce, nationally student numbers did not decline, but increased marginally. Our interest lay in the impact of this on casual academic staff employment in Australia's public universities, noting institutional strategies of having a flexible pool of casual staff to manage fluctuations in student demand. While the HES data does not allow firm conclusions, trends may become clearer with the release of the 2021 data. Nonetheless, it appears that many universities reduced casual academic staff numbers and marginally increased full and part time appointments. Overall, there were fewer academic staff to teach a static or increased number of students. What this exercise suggests is that irrespective of student enrolments, some universities may have used the pandemic as an opportunity for restructures and academic renewal. It also highlights the difficulties that universities may experience in managing their academic workforce.

The past informs the future. It achieves this in two ways: first, by providing the context in which decisions are made, and, second, by delivering the various experiences that enable discovery of what does and does not work. As the Australian vocational education and training (VET) system has evolved, the institutional structures and frameworks that are now in place may determine the direction of its next turn, while the willingness to learn from past experiences will dictate whether it will turn at all. 'The past informing the future' is the theme for the 2021 'No Frills' Conference -- a conference to be held online, because if anything has been learned from 2020, it is that the freedom to travel is no longer guaranteed. This 'No Frills' discussion paper reflects on some key developments in VET's past and how they have shaped the sector's approach to enduring issues such as VET's purpose, national harmonisation, and quality.

As part of its regulatory roles, the Australian Government Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) is required to assess evidence of 'scholarship' that is put forward by providers, whether evidence of scholarship by individuals, such as teaching staff within the provider, or for the provider as a whole. TEQSA is seeking to review whether its current approach to assessing claims of scholarship and scholarly activity (as described in the Guidance Note on Scholarship) is adequate, or if the approach needs to be reconceptualised. The purpose of this discussion paper is to set out, for consideration by the sector and other stakeholders, draft principles that are proposed to guide providers in making claims related to scholarship, and to inform TEQSA's assessments of such claims. TEQSA's Guidance Note describes 'scholarship' as 'activities concerned with gaining new or improved understanding, appreciation and insights into a field of knowledge, and engaging with and keeping up to date with advances in the field.' This includes advances in ways of teaching and learning in the field and advances in professional practice, as well as advances in disciplinary knowledge through original research.' This discussion paper proposes a set of principles that would guide providers when offering evidence of their capacity to meet the requirements of the Higher Education Standards (HES) Framework in relation to scholarship. [For "Guidance Note: Scholarship. Version 2.5," see ED610488.]

This paper studies the impact of compulsory schooling on violent behaviour and victimization in school using individual-level administrative data matching education and criminal records from Queensland (Australia). Exploiting a legislative increase in the minimum dropout age in 2006, this study defines a series of regression-discontinuity specifications to show that compulsory schooling reduces crime but increases violent behaviour in school. While police records show that property and drugs offences decrease, education records indicate that violence and victimization in school increase. Thus, prior studies that fail to consider in-school behaviour may over-estimate the short-run crime-reducing impact of compulsory education.