The papers in this publication have been developed from presentations made at a workshop held at the Australian Institute of Family Studies in 2001. The purpose of that meeting was to explore the possibility of establishing a national multidisciplinary research partnership focused on the needs of Australian children. The first paper, 'New ways of causal...

Tim Wyatt critically examines two approaches to benchmarking vocational education and training - benchmarking through performance indicators and comparative case studies. He finds both approaches provide useful information, although the case study approach enables a more thorough analysis of particular issues and can take greater account of complex and diverse institutional structures. This approach also...

A change of education policy in South Australia allowed Chris Ryan to study the impact of an additional year of junior primary school on student achievement. It appears that the extra year increased numeracy and literacy performance in mid-secondary school significantly, among boys and girls and across ability levels.