Australian schools will continue to disappoint if governments don't ensure teaching programs are actually working.
That's the blunt warning in a Productivity Commission draft report released on Tuesday.
It says while there's lots of data collected about the outcomes of students and schools, there's not much evaluation about how well policies, programs and teaching practices in Australian schools work.
There was a growing consensus that increasing funding and focusing on accountability alone were insufficient to improve students' achievements.
"Without improving and applying evidence to policy-making and teaching in schools and classrooms, there is a substantial risk that increased resourcing of schools will continue to deliver disappointing outcomes," the report states.
It says point-in-time measurements of student achievement, such as NAPLAN, don't give a full picture of the impact that schools have on student achievement.
There needs to be both top-down monitoring, such as the national tests, and bottom-up evaluation of what is working.
Commissioner Jonathan Coppel says students in some schools perform better than expected compared with similar institutions.
"We should be lifting the bonnet on these schools to find out what they are doing, and carefully evaluating if we can apply their methods across schools," he said.
The draft report makes 13 recommendations, including establishing a shared national education evidence base and creating a new education agreement among all governments to define what research should be done.
But the teachers' union says there is already plenty of research showing what programs and teaching methods have positive effects on students.
"What is missing too often in Australia's schools is not knowledge of what works, but the resources to provide it to students," federal president Correna Haythorpe said.
