The Paul Ramsay Foundation (“empowering people, enabling change”) will provide $16.4m to the University of Newcastle to deliver its Quality Teaching Rounds programme to 30 000 Australian teachers. The foundation is supported by the estate of the late Paul Ramsay, which also separately funds the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation.

UniNewcastle laureate professor Jenny Gore and colleagues will use the new money to expand their QTR professional development programme from 224 schools last year to 3504 in 2022.

The programme involves school teachers observing and commenting on each other’s teaching. “The beauty of Quality Teaching Rounds is that it puts all participants on the same level, where they can assess the quality of teaching and provide specific feedback to their peers.

“Better professional development is fundamental to better outcomes for students, both academic and non-academic. QTR offers great promise across all subject areas and year levels, Professor Gore says.

The university says this is the largest research gift in the university’s history. Last year entrepreneur Jack Ma established the Ma and Morley Scholarship programme, valued at A$26.4m