Grattan Institute's second Cities program investigates decision making in eight of the world’s most successful cities, and asks what governance arrangements accompanied their broad-based improvement. Every city has a different story, but among these differences a number of common themes emerged. These included the importance of public engagement, consistent strategic direction, cross-sectoral collaboration, and regional...

The most important characteristic of a city is whether it meets the needs of its residents, both material and psychological. Despite the fact that these needs are central to our lives, they are often at the periphery of conversations about the future of Australian cities. With these criteria in mind, it is clear that while...

Although all Australian schools have systems of evaluation and development in place, they clearly aren’t working. Teachers believe that the systems are broken, according to this report.

The Australian debate on carbon pricing has been dominated by concerns that Australia might lose industry and jobs offshore if it has a carbon price when competitor countries do not. If Australian production moves to countries with higher emissions, this would defeat the purpose of carbon pricing. To protect industry from such an event, government...

With the recent release of the Federal Government’s ‘My School’ website, this report discusses how to measure school performance accurately, and the importance of incorporating these performance measures into managing each level of school education systems. ‘My School’ publishes school performance scores for each school as the average of their students’ NAPLAN results, comparing them...