Show Notes
Understanding how children learn and develop in the early years is key to supporting strong educational outcomes and lifelong wellbeing. Last month, the OECD released findings from the 2025 Early Learning and Child Well-being Study, or IELS, the first internationally comparable study designed to measure how children are learning and developing at age 5. The study looks across 3 key domains: foundational learning, executive function, and social and emotional skills. As we know, the early years from birth to age 5 are a critical period for building the foundations children need to communicate, regulate their emotions, concentrate, solve problems and engage with others.
In today's episode, we're joined by Dr Dan Cloney, Senior Research Fellow at the Australian Council for Educational Research and Lead Researcher for IELS here at ACER. We unpack some of the key findings from the study, explore what made the assessment design unique, and discuss why it's so important to ensure every child arrives at school with the strongest possible foundations. Host: Rebecca Vukovic Guest: Dr Dan Cloney
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Last week, the latest 2025 results for the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (or, PISA) were released. PISA is the world’s largest international assessment of student learning, and it shows how well 15-year-old students can apply their knowledge and skills in science, reading and mathematics to real-world situations. PISA 2025 involved 760,000 students internationally, and in Australia, more than 14,500 students from 766 schools participated in the assessment.