In laying out his agenda, re-elected Education Minister Jason Clare rightly identified the enormity of this challenge, noting that children born today will be an integral part of the 2050 workforce, so “we’ve got to … get their education right’’.

That’s a huge responsibility for our schools and teachers, and to be brutally honest, much work must be done.

Australia’s education performance globally has been in decline for over a decade, while more than 30 per cent of Year 3 students nationwide are not proficient in reading or numeracy.

School dropout rates have been climbing, with one in five young people failing to complete Year 12, which comes at a significant cost to individuals and the broader economy.

Meanwhile, there’s a debate to be had about the national curriculum and whether it is fit for purpose.

One thing we must not lose sight of is the central role of more than 320,000 teachers on the frontline of the bid to boost student outcomes.

As the most recent nationwide review into initial teacher education found, too many beginning teachers feel their university training did not equip them for the challenges they face in the classroom. It’s hardly surprising that around one in five leave within the first three years of entering the profession.

Critical to being able to teach well is knowledge of effective instructional strategies that support student learning.

While the federal government and some state and territory jurisdictions have done a commendable job promoting evidence-based teaching methods, such as explicit instruction and the inclusion of systematic phonics to teach reading, controversial claims and interventions stubbornly persist across our education system.

We don’t have to look hard to find examples of ineffective practices with little to no supporting evidence.

The whole language (and later balanced literacy) philosophy for teaching reading, based on the belief that children will learn to read if immersed in a literacy-rich environment, is probably the best example.

Despite empirical evidence pointing to an early emphasis on systematic synthetic phonics being the superior approach to teaching reading, some schools and systems persist with whole language or balanced literacy methods.

Another example is the use of minimally guided “discovery” learning approaches, which continue to be promoted in initial teacher education in spite of clear evidence such approaches are not optimal for novice learners.

And then there’s the theory of learning styles – perhaps one of the more stubborn myths to cast a shadow over education. Hands up if you’re a parent who's engaged in small talk at school pick up only to be told that someone’s child was a “visual learner” or “kinaesthetic learner”.

The concept sounds credible (who hasn’t been aided by a well-illustrated diagram when attempting to decipher new information?).

In fact, the theory of learning styles is based on self-reported student surveys about how they perceive they learn best, which, unvalidated by independent studies, equates to a mere preference.

One of the challenges we face in attempting to remove myths, misconceptions, fads, and fallacies from education is the role of cognitive bias.

While it is natural to have biases – all humans have them – they lead us to process information subjectively, often resulting in inaccurate or irrational judgments.

Take, for example, a newly graduated teacher who, as a child, learned to read before starting formal schooling simply by being read storybooks.

During their university training, this teacher may have been taught about balanced literacy, confirming their existing bias that learning to read was a natural process that should be guided rather than explicitly taught.

Once in the classroom and using the methods promoted at university, this teacher would be inclined to look to the students who made good learning progress as ‘evidence’ of their effectiveness. It would be much less likely for the teacher to blame the favoured teaching approach for some students struggling.

Accepting information consistent with beliefs and dismissing inconsistent information is common, but our subjective human judgments are often flawed and inaccurate.

University education faculties have a responsibility to ensure that only evidence-based practices are taught and promoted in courses so that teachers, once in the classroom, have the knowledge they need to make informed decisions about how and what to teach.

Disproven programs and practices have no place in schools. They are time-wasters at best; at worst, they can be harmful. 

Mandatory, evidence-based core content has now been added to the initial teacher education accreditation standards, but the jury is out on whether all universities have the expertise or desire to deliver it.

A government-appointed oversight board, chaired by the well-regarded Bill Louden, is currently examining the extent to which the core content has been embedded in teaching courses and is due to report back to education ministers by the end of October.

Those of us pushing for an evidence-based approach to schooling for many years are cautiously optimistic that this process will lead to meaningful action.

Reforming education at a national level is a colossal challenge and will require a long-term commitment by multiple stakeholders.

Clare is the first education minister to complete a full term in government and return for a second since Brendan Nelson, who held the portfolio between 2001 and 2006.

Fixing initial teacher education presents an opportunity to dramatically shift the dial when it comes to lifting Australia’s education outcomes and delivering the knowledgeable and skilled workforce this nation needs.