Attracting High Achievers to Australia’s Teaching Workforce

Few high achievers become teachers in Australia. A 2019 study conducted by Grattan Institute paints a bleak picture. (Note: ATAR, which stands for Australian Tertiary Admission Rank, is the undergraduate degree entry score for secondary school students; an ATAR of 80 means your score is better than 80% of the students in your state) In … Continue reading Attracting High Achievers to Australia’s Teaching Workforce →

Utopia School

Schooling has become counter-intuitive. Everyone seems to agree that each student has unique interests, needs, and learning style, yet the ‘system’ puts them into age-defined year levels and classes and prescribe them the same curriculum. In any lesson, the teacher gives the same instruction to dozens of students, but the chances of that instruction being … Continue reading Utopia School →

STEM in Australian Schools: Why and How

The Problem As an engineer by training and formal digital technology consultant in pursuit of a career in education, I was appalled by the lack of STEM education in secondary schools on my recent quest to find a suitable school for my newborn daughter. STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. To be fair, … Continue reading STEM in Australian Schools: Why and How →

An Incentive Approach to the Higher Education Problem

Introduction Many economists (mostly microeconomists) claim that the study of incentives is at the core of the field of economics. They maintain that by studying incentives, we can explain why certain people do (or don’t do) certain things and we can design or manipulate incentives to achieve the desired behaviour of people. This is essentially … Continue reading An Incentive Approach to the Higher Education Problem →