Stronger student outcomes found in Teach For Australia partner schools

New research has found that schools partnering with Teach For Australia are achieving stronger growth in Year 9 reading and numeracy than comparable schools.

The analysis was commissioned by Teach For Australia and undertaken by education policy expert Dr Peter Goss, who examined 131 TFA partner schools that employed TFA teachers between 2019 and 2025, alongside 522 comparator schools with similar characteristics, drawing on longitudinal NAPLAN data to track student progress over time.

Across that period, TFA partner schools improved their Year 9 NAPLAN value-add for reading and numeracy, while comparator schools did not show the same improvement. The gains were strongest in schools with deeper TFA engagement, reaching up to 3.7 months of additional learning above what school demographics and national trends would predict.

Stable Year 7 results across the same period point to genuine progress by Year 9, rather than gains driven by stronger incoming student cohorts. This pattern held consistently across a wide range of school contexts, with the strongest gains found in schools with sustained engagement with Teach For Australia – including both current teachers in the program and alumni who have stayed on in the classroom.

Dr Goss noted that what stood out in the analysis was the scale and consistency of the impact across a large and diverse set of partner schools. Schools with TFA teachers improved more than average in both reading and numeracy, with greater gains among schools with more TFA teachers. Taken together, the findings point to a clear and growing return on sustained investment in teaching capability in the schools that need it most.

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