The Australian Council for Educational Research has called for greater accountability from students, teachers and schools, saying educational achievement needed to be measured on results and not assumed to improve with increased budgets or new computers.

In a new paper Output Measurement in Education, the council's principal research fellow, Andrew Dowling, argues that, ''Governments can no longer justify their performance in education in terms of inputs; that is, in terms of the amount of new money they have provided, or the number of new teachers they have employed, or the range of new computers they have installed.''

Instead, output measures, particularly those related to student achievement, were ''the new bottom line in education'' and would increasingly be seen in Australia and around the world.

Dr Dowling said despite global spending on education, totalling $2trillion in 2006, performance had barely improved in decades.

''Funding does not often correlate with performance, and therefore educational quality must be measured by other means.'' He believed an increased focus on performance measures constituted a positive shift in education, but had not gone far enough.

''More work needs to be done in evaluating the programs that are meant to improve student performance. The programs that are designed for the most disadvantaged students often escape any systemic form of evaluation yet systems need to formally identify what actually works and doesn't work in schools.'' Dr Dowling's research found while many high-performing OECD countries, such as Japan, Finland, the Netherlands and Korea, did not have extensive national student testing, recent research from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development showed testing and accountability measures were found to improve student results.

Moreover, it was likely pressure would increase, both nationally and internationally, for accountability to be more precisely measured.

Dr Dowling did not support the idea of ''value-added'' assessment, in which a student's improvement over time was measured rather than their absolute level of achievement at any given point.

He said value-added assessment was statistically challenging and open to error, particularly if a child changed schools.

Dr Dowling also condemned a lack of knowledge and open acceptance in the teaching profession of what constituted effective teaching.

He believed output measures would become the new currency in education, upon which students, teachers and schools would increasingly be judged.

This would shift school practice, in contrast with current ''superficial'' education policy.

While the paper urged increased measurement of performance and transparency of information, it did not advocate rewards and sanctions based on performance. ''... There is not yet enough conclusive evidence to show whether the type of accountability apparent in the United States works or not,'' Dr Dowling said.

Source: canberratimes.com.au