If you were looking for a headline putting out a report saying that reducing class sizes doesn’t lead to better student outcomes is a good way to get it. But that claim in the new report from a think tank called the Grattan Institute doesn’t stack up.

Anybody who has spent any time in schools knows how critically important class sizes are.

Just last month the AEU asked over 11,000 teachers to nominate the single most important change they believed would help them improve student outcomes. The overwhelmingly response was: reducing class sizes.

Read more: Of Course Smaller Class Sizes Make a Difference

A research brief published by the public education group, Save Our Schools, says that Labor and Liberal claims that teacher bonuses will improve student achievement is not supported by research evidence. SOS National Convenor, Trevor Cobbold, said that the proposed bonuses will be a huge waste of money and encourage more teaching to the test in schools.

“The weight of research evidence is that teacher performance bonuses do not improve student results. Yet again, faith has ruled over evidence in the formulation of education policy. Cash bonuses for teachers will only encourage more teaching to the test and artificial inflation of test scores.

“Labor proposes to spend $1.25 billion over five years while the Liberal’s scheme will cost $210 million over three years. It all promises to be a huge waste of taxpayer funds.

Read more: Teacher Bonuses Fail to Improve Student Results

One day recently I heard an unearthly wailing coming from my 11-year-old son's room. It was like no sound I'd ever heard from him before. He doesn't normally cry at television or films but, curled up alone in his bed reading, when the fantasy character he identified with met a grim end, vanquished by the forces of darkness, he found it absolutely devastating.

Having perhaps antiquated expectations of children's fiction, I flicked through the book, sure he must have misinterpreted the ending. I was wrong.

A friend complained to her daughter's school after finding her 10-year-old in shuddering hysterics over a book about the Holocaust. "It was so graphic about the horror of the train journey to the death camps: people were dying and being shoved out of the train. It ended with the main character going into the gas chambers.

Read more: Beyond the happy ending

Deborah Zang always struggled at school despite working hard. So when her son Paul experienced similar difficulties, she knew something was wrong.

"I was one of these kids that failed at school and growing up I heard 'If only you'd apply yourself', 'You're a daydreamer', 'If only you'd work harder', but I did work so hard," she says.

"When I saw my son going through the same thing, I thought, no, the same thing is not going to happen to him."

Although Paul's state school dismissed his learning difficulties as "just a stage", Ms Zang felt uneasy.

She took him to SPELD (Specific Learning Difficulties Association of Victoria) where Paul, then 9, was diagnosed with dyslexia.

It was then — in 2005, at the age of 46 — that she realised she, too, was dyslexic. Her younger daughter, Anastasia, was diagnosed later.

Read more: Reading between crossed lines

A NATIONAL campaign has been launched to make music classes compulsory in all primary schools after the head of the Music Council of Australia, Dick Letts, said this week that he favoured making it optional.

One of the campaign's leaders, Richard Gill, who is the artistic director of the Sydney Symphony's education program, said there was scientific evidence that children undertaking serious music education improved in all other subjects and general wellbeing.

''Music is the senior service of the arts,'' he said. ''Everything else benefits if children study music.''

The national curriculum authority is considering the make-up of the syllabus for 2012 and the competing demands of visual arts, media studies, dance, drama and music. Letts said every school would have to offer at least two art forms and he did not want to create a dispute between advocates of the different disciplines.

Read more: Drumming up support for music lessons