School education researchers are ambivalent about Labor’s proposal for an evidence institute for schools, with some suggesting it implies academics are not performing. This isn’t so so say Emma Rowe (Deakin U) and Trevor Gale (UniGlasgow, ex Deakin U) who cite QS rankings to claim, “Australia produces some of the best education research in the world.”

They also worry that the proposed institute could end up running party lines, warning; “the prevailing logic of teacher education policy is now clearly very ideological rather than based on the research evidence.”

And they suggest that the $280m Labor’s Tanya Plibersek promises for the institute would be better spent in schools. But not all of it, they also propose spending money to help academic research reach “schools and teachers,” who, they say,  “reportedly find it difficult to access peer-reviewed journal articles, due to the cost. They can also be difficult to locate and employ quite dense language. It is important to ensure that existing research is readily translatable to classroom practise for time-poor teachers.”

But perhaps not research from all education faculties . Despite QS, the Australian Research Council’s current performance rating scores Australian university research on education at 11 faculties below world standard, 19 at it, six above world standard and only two, the universities of Melbourne and Queensland, well above.