Education is a powerful intervention in the lives of children and their parents. As such it could probably contribute significantly to efforts to improve society. To do so there would need to be agreement regarding: what sort of society we seek to create (values); knowledge about what is happening and where there are problems (cf epidemiology in medicine); and evidence-based policies to address the problems and discover ‘what works’ (cf clinical trials in medicine). The failure of politicians to adopt evidence - based approaches is seen as a problem but so also is a culture in academia that is anti-scientific. Schools, in contrast, have adopted rigorous and comprehensive monitoring systems over the last 20 years and are increasingly participating in experiments and careful evaluation. Questions are raised about proper roles of regulatory agencies.
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