Eva Cox takes the child care rebate for a spin and finds it wanting.

Labor's pledge to keeping pumping valuable education dollars into the Coalition's wasteful SES funding scheme is bad policy, writes Lyndsay Connors.

Why keep two technical training systems on the road when neither is worthy of a pink slip, asks Ben Eltham.

Many teachers - particularly in the public system - still assume that education is something that happens to children, rather than with them, argues Joanna Mendelssohn. But current federal government policy won't bring about the changes needed in our schools.

Sheldon Rothman unpacks the stats on equity in Australia's education system, and finds that to help disadvantaged young people catch up to other groups we need much greater investment in the schools they attend.

Howard’s claim to have increased public school funding by 70% over the last ten years might not be a lie – or even a damn lie – but it’s definitely a dodgy statistic, writes Lyndsay Connors.

Last week’s report on ‘Balancing Work and Family’ fails to address the inadequate supply of children’s services, which is undermining choice and leading to ever-rising costs, writes Eva Cox.

Bruce Wilson blames educational curricula for lost confidence by parents and proposes several solutions to remedy this, starting with a simpler, shorter, national curriculum.

Our focus on the private public divide obscures the real disparities between schools in affluent and disadvantaged areas, writes Ellen Koshland. To move forward we need to re-shape the education system around the concept of public value, rather than who owns or runs our schools.

This week it was revealed that private schools are receiving around $2 billion more than they are entitled to under the SES model for private school funding. In the latest instalment of the Centre for Policy Development's series on education funding policy, Anthony Ashbolt argues that all state aid to private schools reinforces anti-democratic tendencies in our society.