Teenagers lead busy lives.

And to get through everything from school exams to softball games, they need nutritious food.

But research suggests Australian teens aren’t getting the nutrients they need, because their diets often revolve around sugary, salty and processed foods.

So what’s behind this? And how can we help our teens eat better?

The teenage years

Adolescence is a crucial time of growth and development.

During this time, teenagers go through various physical changes. They generally double their body weight and go through a growth spurt. They also experience rapid hormonal changes, as the adolescent brain pumps out more hormones related to growth, stress and sexual development.

At the same time, they are dealing with various social and emotional pressures. This includes their growing desire to be independent which may involve distancing themselves from – or in some cases actively rebelling against – their family values. They may also develop new friendships, juggling these with other commitments such as schoolwork and sport.

Good nutrition helps teens navigate all these changes. However, research suggests teenagers aren’t eating enough healthy foods.

What teens are eating

Australian teenagers get, on average, around 35% of their daily energy from nutrient-poor, energy-dense foods. These include confectionery, processed meats and salty snacks. Young Australians also consume a lot of sweetened drinks, such as soft drinks and energy drinks. On average, teens have sugary drinks at least once a week.

Compared to other age groups, adolescents are the least likely to eat the recommended amount of fruit and vegetables – two serves of fruit and five serves of vegetables each day. Worryingly, only 4% of teenagers meet that recommendation.

Worse still, globally roughly one-third of teenagers can’t access enough food. This may be because they live in regions affected by poverty, conflict or climate change.

One 2022 study examined the eating habits of students aged between 11 and 18, across 95 countries. It found up to 30% had experienced food insecurity – meaning they couldn’t access enough safe and nutritious food – in the last month. This study also suggested a link between food insecurity and reduced school attendance and physical activity, as well as poorer mental health.

Not just ‘bad choices’

So why are teenagers choosing unhealthy foods over healthy ones?

They are not simply making bad choices. So criticising their eating habits will only harm their relationship with food, and may contribute to feelings of shame and low self-esteem.

Research suggests teenagers make food choices based on various factors.

One is relationships. As teenagers grow and mature, they spend less time with their family and more time with their peers. As a result, their food choices are increasingly shaped by what their friends eat. Research suggests teenagers’ food choices are also influenced by where they socialise, such as fast food restaurants. The price of food also matters, with teenagers more likely to eat unhealthy foods because they are cheaper.

Another factor is social trends. Research suggests targeted advertising and celebrity endorsements have a disproportionate impact on adolescent food choices. And they mainly promote convenient, nutrient-poor options such as fast food and confectionery. Food trends, many of which are driven by social media, may also influence what teenagers eat. Recent examples include microwave-friendly mug cakes and the TikTok-famous “girl dinner”, both of which generally have little nutritional value.

Teenagers also care about taste. It goes without saying, junk food is delicious. That’s because food companies design it in a way that taps into our cravings, making us eat more. Research suggests teenagers may struggle to resist or stop eating unhealthy foods because they haven’t fully learnt to control their appetites. Advertising exacerbates this by framing unhealthy food as the most delicious and convenient option.

Raising healthier teens

The good news is, we can help our teens eat more nutritious foods. But that requires action on both a policy and household level.

In policy

Unfortunately, we tend to overlook teenagers in nutrition research and policy. Our new global framework for adolescent nutrition aims to change that. With help from young people and international nutrition experts, we developed several key recommendations:

• boost nutrition education in schools, by establishing a national school curriculum to safely promote healthy eating and combat nutrition misinformation from social media
• increase access to healthy, affordable foods by providing or subsidising healthy school meals, expanding community food programs in places where teenagers hang out such as sporting clubs and supporting local produce markets
• regulate how companies market unhealthy foods to young people, by restricting teen-directed advertising in apps and gaming platforms and banning unhealthy food marketing near schools, sporting fields and on public transport.

At home

There are also practical ways parents and families can help teenagers eat more healthily.

Here are some ideas:

• make your teen the “cook of the day”, assigning them one day each week where they choose and/or cook a nutritious meal that helps build their cooking skills
• involve your teen in meal planning, encouraging them to brainstorm healthy meals that are also tasty and affordable
• eat shared meals, ideally as a family and without any devices.

As policymakers, we must make healthy foods more visible, convenient and affordable for teenagers. And as parents, we shouldn’t shame teens for their eating habits, but instead show them how fun and achievable healthy eating can be. Together, these actions will help our teenagers grow into healthy, active adults.

Catharine Fleming receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council, Medical Research Future Fund, Australian Research Council, Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition, Nutrition International and United Nations Children's Fund. She is a member of the Global Adolescent Nutrition Network.

The New Yorker magazine’s recently published investigation into OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman posed a loaded question: can the people building this powerful technology actually be trusted?

The report described a system where commercial incentives drive behaviour and oversight is treated as a nuisance. In Aotearoa New Zealand, there is a similarly urgent question: can the governance frameworks we are building to manage that technology be trusted to work?

This is particularly relevant to the public service and government agencies, now being encouraged to embrace AI. At a recent International Research Society for Public Management conference, the global research community grappled with how AI can align with the public interest.

A clear divergence is emerging. Some jurisdictions are building surveillance-heavy data systems, while others are constructing robust, binding systems to protect citizen consent.

Aotearoa New Zealand occupies a precarious middle ground. The Public Service AI Framework names the right principles: transparency, fairness and human oversight. But it is explicitly non-binding.

We have dubbed it a “Pollyanna policy” – based on the Pollyanna principle which describes a general bias towards positivity and optimism about outcomes.

AI and institutional complexity

In the area of AI governance, this becomes a matter of stating good intentions and issuing non-binding guidance, trusting existing frameworks will absorb genuinely novel challenges.

We argue this underestimates the institutional constraints, conflicting incentives and strategic vulnerability of that middle ground, without legislative armour to protect citizen data.

It also underestimates the “institutional friction” that defines modern public institutions where many people and departments have power over policy. This tends to weaken responsiveness to problems.

Governance in a typical public sector agency is not a clean, ordered structure. It is an accumulation of layer upon layer of policy, operational procedure, ministerial expectation, legislative obligation and professional conventions.

New regulatory instruments rarely replace old ones. They are added alongside them, often interacting in unpredictable ways.

AI is a “flat” technology that processes information as a statistical landscape. It lacks the institutional memory to know that a prompt today might quietly undermine the kinds of political and constitutional compromises, made over time, that are central to effective government.

The accountability gap

Before AI can be usefully deployed, agencies must do the diagnostic work of understanding what that governance environment actually is.

The instinct instead is to add further AI governance guidance to a system already straining under accumulated advice.

As Australia’s Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme demonstrated, algorithmic systems deployed without this kind of clarity can produce catastrophic harm.

The non-binding nature of the Public Service AI Framework abdicates central responsibility, offloading accountability to individual agencies with vastly different levels of capability.

Algorithmic decision-making disrupts traditional accountability within organisations because information, justification and consequences can no longer be traced through a single responsible chain.

The framework assumes organisational readiness, but the evidence does not support this. The 2025 Public Service Census found that while a third of public servants had used AI for work, only 14% used it regularly.

This gap is driven by the friction that arises when a general-purpose tool like AI meets the accumulated complexity of how decisions actually get made.

Don’t get us wrong: the framework names the right principles. But principles without a legislative mandate become aspirational without accountability. In an already strained system, another non-binding document changes very little.

Māori data sovereignty

In Aotearoa New Zealand, this governance vacuum has an added dimension. Māori data sovereignty is a constitutional imperative under the Treaty of Waitangi, not a technical add-on.

The bureaucracy has an obligation to protect Indigenous sovereignty, yet the current approach leaves the gate unguarded. As legal scholars Woodrow Hartzog and Jessica Silbey argue in their 2025 article “How AI Destroys Institutions”:

AI systems are built to function in ways that degrade and are likely to destroy our civic institutions. [They] have the effect of eroding expertise, short-circuiting decision-making, and isolating people from each other.

This risk is amplified by the current state of AI technology. “Hallucinations” are not bugs but inherent statistical features of large language models. And evidence confirms they remain a risk in high-stakes settings such as medicine.

The Five Eyes security agencies evidently agree: their April 2026 joint guidance on agentic AI calls explicitly for incremental deployment, continuous threat assessment and sustained human oversight.

When these models hallucinate legal facts they risk overwriting Indigenous knowledge with plausible fictions.

This is compounded by the “sycophantic” tendency of large language models to mirror the user’s bias. In a policy system grappling with the legacy of colonisation, this can simply reinforce an echo chamber.

Building a counterweight

Used well, AI does present opportunities. It can reveal inconsistencies in policy frameworks and interrogate inherited assumptions.

But realising that opportunity requires that organisations understand themselves well enough to know where the technology will fail.

If these AI tools are built by companies where incentives outpace ethics, the burden on public institutions is to act as a genuine counterweight.

This means moving beyond “responsible” adoption toward creating formal, protected roles where officials interrogate AI output for bias and fabrication, rather than accepting speed as a proxy for quality.

The strategy, standards and guidance documents point in the right direction. But in the gap between aspiration and accountability, we must ask whether we continue to rely on optimism, or will we build the strong, ethical oversight capable of catching what the technology cannot?

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Every day, we publish a selection of your emails in our newsletter. We’d love to hear from you, you can email us at yoursay@theconversation.edu.au.

Monday May 11

The politics of fear

“How can we take a politician seriously if all she has is stirring up hate on immigrants and Indigenous people with no other stated policies? Apparently, it seems quite easy. In his book Goliath’s Curse, author Luke Kemp cites countless examples of individuals taking leadership roles by stirring up fear of external threats to take our ‘lootable assets’ (jobs, houses, and anything of physical value). Surveys across eight modern, high-income countries found that around 10–25% ranked as highly authoritarian. We, it seems, might be on the cusp of going the same way with the surge of extreme right-wing politicians in Australia using the external threat as their only policy.”

Paul Campbell, West End QLD

The great tax debate

“To tax or not to tax? Presently, the reason for not taxing gas exports as I understand it is to keep faith with our trading partners. From my experience in competitive markets, when economic circumstances change and costs go up there’s a choice. You can put your prices up and if that makes you more expensive, then the market will react and you then have the choice of accepting less market share and retaining profit margin or accepting a lesser margin and retaining market share. Either way, a tax will benefit the Australian public and industry, either from increased federal revenue or greater gas supply at lower prices.”

Hugh Kushner

General practitioners (GPs) and hospital doctors are usually the first contact point for patients, but as our new research shows, they can take on different roles, acting either as gatekeepers or brokers.

As gatekeepers they make sure unnecessary investigations are avoided and scarce resources used efficiently. As brokers, they advocate for their patients’ access to the limited resources available.

For people living with life-limiting disease, the role a doctor adopts can mean the difference between timely care and dangerous delay.

Our research focused on people who had lived with a terminal cancer diagnosis for a long time. The impact of these different roles can be seen clearly.

When GPs were concerned a person’s symptoms could indicate cancer, most patients were referred to specialist services quickly so diagnostic work could be undertaken.

But there were also cases where patients, even with a history of cancer, were not referred quickly. There are several reasons why this might occur.

One is that the GP thinks the patient’s symptoms are due to a different condition. For example, one of the people in our study had a history of breast cancer, but also of mental health issues. When they presented with breathlessness, their GP prescribed an antidepressant.

The breathlessness persisted and the patient returned to the GP and eventually ended up in the emergency department where they were diagnosed with lung metastases.

Another patient had a lump on her breast ten years after breast cancer. Her GP said it was a cyst, and it was not until she saw a female doctor that she was sent to her specialist to find the cancer had metastasised.

Even in the hospital sector resources could be withheld from patients.

One study participant was found to have a terminal brain tumour and was sent home and told treatment would be “a waste of time”. It was only due to the tenacity of their spouse that the patient was eventually sent for possible treatment.

Doctors as advocates

In contrast, for some patients a health professional will broker access to resources others might not be given.

Again, reasons for this vary, but can often come down to some assessment about who is worthy of this extra effort.

One of the patients we spoke to had malignant melanoma that had been misdiagnosed years earlier as benign. Their specialist went in to bat for them, working to get them onto a vaccine trial, trying to make up for that system failure.

Another patient, a medical professional, was one of only 100 people in New Zealand put on an unsubsidised medication at no cost to them. Yet another, who was in their 30s, was placed on a number of trials for melanoma, even in circumstances where they did not meet the trial protocol.

We can see some clear reasons why a health professional may broker access to scarce resources for their patient. The patient may have been let down by the health system earlier, they may have strong connections with the health system because of their work, and they may be regarded as being more worthy because of their age.

There will be many other factors, but we have no systematic research on this issue. What we do have, though, is a situation where health professionals are making determinations about who is worthy of access to resources.

These decisions are not mere judgements about need or likely clinical benefits.

Reinforcing existing inequities

For Māori, gatekeeping and brokering may have very different effects.

Gatekeeping may not be malicious but can reproduce the experience of later diagnosis and poorer outcomes, which is already more common for Māori.

Māori are also less likely to start with the advantages that make a patient “broker-worthy”. If brokerage is informal and discretionary, it risks reinforcing inequities the system nominally wants to reduce.

A third role we saw was less about tests and treatments and more about what kinds of knowledge and practice are allowed into the clinic. Some practitioners acted as boundary enforcers, defending the edge of Western evidence-based medicine by excluding or ignoring other approaches to cancer and healing.

One patient in our study rejected Western medicine, concluding that doctors did not listen to them or understand their cultural and spiritual world.

GPs and hospital specialists will always have to balance finite resources, uncertain evidence and competing obligations. But whether they primarily act as gatekeepers, brokers, boundary enforcers or as bridge builders across these roles has real consequences for who is diagnosed, who is treated, and who lives well with cancer in Aotearoa.

For Māori, whose cancer journeys are already shaped by structural inequity, getting those roles right is not an abstract policy debate. It is a matter of life and death.

We need to understand medical practitioners’ decisions about which role they take on. This knowledge may help patients to advocate for themselves and researchers to analyse whether these decisions are fostering equitable outcomes.

Kevin Dew receives funding from the Marsden Fund

Chris Cunningham receives funding from The Marsden Fund, the Health Research Council and National Science Challenges.

Kerry Chamberlain receives funding from the Marsden Fund.

Richard Egan receives funding from the Marsden Fund and the Health Research Council.

Elizabeth Dennett does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

In 2018, when Fiona Wright began writing Kill Your Boomers, the housing crisis was in full swing. Cruelly exacerbated by the pandemic, it is now central to mainstream political debate in Australia. The novel began with a dark joke among Wright’s friends that “there’s nothing any of us can do until our parents drop off the perch”.

Review: Kill Your Boomers – Fiona Wright (Ultimo)

Kill Your Boomers is set in Sydney, where real estate prices are the highest in the country and competition is at fever pitch. As of December 2025, the entry price for a property there was $1,150,000, well out of the reach of most buyers without access to inherited wealth. Due to the scarcity of available properties, electricity substations, tennis courts and other tiny strips of land not normally used for houses have been selling for top prices.

The novel’s flippant title signals its sharp flavour. Its accompanying promotional material likens it to Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation and The Menu, a 2022 black comedy horror movie featuring a homicidal chef.

In some ways, its quasi-realist mode is a departure for Wright, who has previously received acclaim for her essay collections, Small Acts of Disappearance and When the World Was Whole, and two poetry collections, Domestic Interior and Knuckled. Her work has previously dealt with disordered eating and compulsive behaviour, themes that reappear in Kill Your Boomers.

Improve your self-esteem

Thirty-something Kiera lives with two housemates in decaying accommodation that is desperately in need of repairs. She works part-time as a nanny for Johanna, a glamorous “natural” supplements executive, minding twin babies and doing domestic chores like making bone broth from scratch.

She shops for “pure” groceries, such as sauerkraut juice and nutritional yeast, and pockets a few items to feed herself in between. Johanna gives her free supplements with exotic names as tokens for being late home from work almost every day.

Aside from nannying, Kiera ekes out a living as a freelance writer, producing “articlectorials” with headlines like “Top Ten Tips for First Home Buyers (brought to you by Mortgage Choice)”, “Three Simple Ways to Improve Your Self-Esteem (brought to you by Ella Bache)” and “Are You Burnt-Out? Six Signs That You Need a Mini-Break (brought to you by Rydges)”

On a daily basis, she scrolls through news websites and social media trying to find a story so she can produce a “hot take”. There is a suggestion that she had hoped for a more successful career as a writer before she fell into glorified copywriting.

In her leisure time, Kiera compulsively visits open homes. She imagines herself living in them and what her life would be like if she could afford to own one. This obsession extends to reading real estate listings and reviews on her phone.

Her compulsion becomes more intense when things are going badly. After she injures her hand at Johanna’s house, she notices that her other hand creeps towards her phone repeatedly to check what’s there.

Aspirational markers

Wright shows how the vexed issue of home ownership can create fissures in relationships with friends and family. Kiera’s best friend Dylan is able to buy an apartment thanks to his partner’s inheritance and she feels it keenly. She had assumed they would always be renters together. Her mixed feelings – happiness tainted with envy – in response to Dyl’s good fortune are relatably evoked. “He’s worked so hard, lived so precariously for so long,” she thinks. “But so have I … and so has almost everyone I know.”

We follow Kiera through innumerable houses that are open for inspection. The pull of the crowd towards an open house “feels inexorable”, impossible to resist.

She dresses carefully to create the impression of a person with more money than she really has. When she arrives, she scans the queue to gauge whether she is “overdressed or underdressed or something else entirely”. She notices the expensively conservative attire of the real estate agents – one walks around in plain black brogues “so shiny that they seem to spark whenever they catch a beam of light”.

Kiera is very aware of the role she is playing as a prospective buyer. She goes through the motions of opening cupboards, looking under sinks, while wondering if the agents can see through her pantomime. The agents are playing a role as well, and must not call the bluff of visitors without means.

Some properties are luxurious and perfectly “staged”; others have broken roofs, brittle floors and closets for rooms. Based on hundreds of inspections, she notes that there is always a cookbook open on the kitchen counter and a bottle of “semi-local” and “hip as fuck” gin with two glasses to suggest leisure and relaxation. She discovers the bottles are filled with water.

Kiera is very aware that the props are aspirational markers, but they generate desire nevertheless. Her fantasies are shaped by the cliched real estate media she has consumed over her years of window-shopping. She lives in the future tense, imagining what she can do once she miraculously scores her own property:

Out of season, I would buy fresh flowers and fill vases – I’d own vases – every week. I’d learn how to mow that lawn. I’d find tasks like this rewarding, even pleasurable, rather than annoying.

The hole in the floor

Worrying signs appear at Johanna’s place, when she starts eating Doritos and chain-smoking cigarettes. This prompts fears in Kiera that she won’t make her rent. She is filled with shame at the idea of asking her parents for help yet again, while her brother enjoys their approval of his successful life (career, house, marriage and a privately educated child).

Her squalid rental creates a sense of solidarity with housemates Soraya and Gwen, who live like there’s no tomorrow, drinking and wise cracking in the face of the climate crisis and potential homelessness. They would like to have a shelter to “see out the apocalypse”, but they cannot rely on it.

A massive hole in their kitchen stands for everything that is wrong with renting. Kiera and her housemates put up with this hazard for months without anyone fixing it. First, Kiera thrusts a skewer into its rotting maw; later, she adds googly eyes to humanise it.

When the hole starts communicating with her, Kiera questions her sanity. Its “shreik”, which only Kiera can hear, is uncannily human adjacent. This might be read as a sign of mental illness or alternatively as an eruption of the supernatural into the narrative.

The hole makes dark, provocative comments that tap into her suppressed thoughts about her parents’ generation:

They screwed you over Kiera – all of you. That’s all I’m saying. You don’t have to just take it.

Like a manosphere influencer, the hole gives voice to ugly ideas but also provides a strong sense of purpose.

The hole is reminiscent of the well in Haruki Murakami’s novel The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: a representation of the subconscious mind, which his protagonist Toru can only access when he is at the bottom of it. The well also appears in Murakami’s Norwegian Wood, where it is described as “deep beyond measuring, and crammed full of darkness, as if all the world’s darknesses had been boiled down to their ultimate density”.

Although it features injustices of various kinds – the price of housing in Sydney being the central one – Kill Your Boomers lacks the taut momentum of a crime novel. What it offers instead is a prickly portrait of what precarity allied with aesthetic aspirations can do to a person. Through her desperation to realise the “Australian dream” of home ownership, Kiera is turned against her own kin, seeing them as obstacles to her flourishing.

Yet she never seems to register that she is striving on stolen land. As Wiradjuri author Evelyn Araluen observed in a 2019 essay written from a half-condemned 1860s mansion in inner Sydney:

We’re taught to aspire to something bigger than we came from. Maybe one day we might have money enough to push my people out of Redfern or Waterloo. Maybe if we become rich, we can buy stolen land on my Country.

In common with the joke on which it is based, Kill Your Boomers may be triggering for some because, in Wright’s words, “it has the smallest grain of truth within it, deep within its horror.”

Wright gets inside the skin of her tormented protagonist, showing us what it feels like to long for a place of one’s own, without any chance of ever getting there, at least not without drastic measures. Her closely observed, genre-defying social satire will ring bells for people who are locked out of the housing market, and for those who care about such inequality.

Brigid Magner receives funding from Australian Research Council.

Every day, hundreds of trucks barrel along highways from Melbourne to Brisbane. Some B-triple trucks stretch to 36 metres or more, more than seven times the length of an average car.

Australia relies on those largely diesel-fuelled trucks for the vast majority of our intercity freight.

More trucks are on the way. Infrastructure Australia predicts “large increases in road freight are expected for Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney and Perth” – especially in Melbourne, home to Australia’s busiest cargo port.

As the recent global oil shock has shown, Australia’s reliance on road freight leaves the nation vulnerable to global oil supply problems.

Yet the federal government has just dumped the northern half of the Inland Rail project, connecting Parkes in central New South Wales to near Brisbane.

The axing came after the cost of the whole 1,600 kilometre project was forecast to exceed A$45 billion – more than four times the original budget.

But with Inland Rail not proceeding to Queensland, what does the future of rail freight on Australia’s east coast look like? And does this risk leaving the nation dependent on road freight for decades more?

Inland Rail’s problems and potential

Just three years ago, the Albanese government re-committed to building Inland Rail. Construction had already started in 2018 under then prime minister Scott Morrison, with the project overseen by the government’s Australian Rail Track Corporation.

Labor’s commitment followed an independent review in 2023 by Dr Kerry Schott, who found Inland Rail was “late and over budget”.

Yet the independent review still concluded Inland Rail was “an important project”, which was “needed to meet the increasing national freight task”.

The review said Inland Rail was expected to take around 200,000 trucks off the road each year, cutting greenhouse gas emissions by an estimated 750,000 tonnes a year by 2050. It was also expected to boost regional communities in NSW and Queensland.

Last week, one regional Queensland business said scrapping the northern leg of Inland Rail was “a disaster”.

Why rail freight has declined for decades

Since the 1990s, all Australian highways have been upgraded to handle larger, heavier trucks.

Over the same period, there have been only limited improvements to rail freight. Not surprisingly, much freight that used to go by rail now goes by road.

As an example, back in 1994-95, rail carried about 28% of freight on Australia’s busiest freight corridor between Melbourne and Sydney.

By 2024, rail carried just 2% of freight between the two cities.

Read more: Australia’s freight used to go by train, not truck. Here’s how we can bring back rail – and cut emissions

Inland Rail was meant to take pressure off highways

The Newell Highway is NSW’s longest highway, reaching from the Victorian border at Tocumwal to Queensland’s border at Goondiwindi. It’s currently the main means of moving freight between Melbourne and Brisbane.

Truck movements on the Newell Highway come with many costs. As well as road maintenance costs and the significant costs of ongoing highway upgrades, there are the very real human costs of road crashes.

In the past two years alone, there have been three fatal crashes involving trucks and semi-trailers: in July 2024, September 2025 and January this year. Five people died in those crashes.

Roads and city rail get a better deal

Only days after scrapping the northern half of Inland Rail, the federal government announced it would spend another $3.8 billion on Melbourne’s controversial Suburban Rail Loop. That new funding – ahead of November’s state election – takes the federal contribution to $6 billion over four years.

Other suburban train projects have also won federal funding, such as $5.2 billion towards a Western Sydney Airport Metro and $4.87 billion for Perth’s Metronet urban rail.

Road projects consistently do even better, such as more than $10 billion in federal funds to upgrade Queensland’s Bruce Highway or $15 billion in federal and state funding for a past upgrade of the Pacific Highway.

$2.8 billion for rail freight doesn’t cut it

In place of completing the Inland Rail project, the federal government promised reallocate $1.75 billion towards other interstate rail track, on top of another $1 billion previously announced. That’s less than $2.8 billion for upgrades on a 9,600km national rail network.

That funding will include track renewal, passing loop extensions and improved signalling to remove speed restrictions on the rail network between Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. There will also be some upgrades in flood-prone parts of the east-west rail corridor to Perth.

It’s far from what’s actually needed, especially for interstate rail lines waiting on much-needed track upgrades. Priority areas I’ve long argued need funding include:

• a more direct route between Macarthur and Cootamundra in NSW, cutting two hours off freight train times and speeding up passenger train journeys

• securing a corridor now for a less winding track between Macarthur and Mittagong in NSW

• two key bypasses north of Sydney, around Newcastle and Karuah Valley, which would jointly cut around an hour off train trips.

Along with upgrades like those, if Australia wants to be able to reduce its reliance on road freight, a future government will have to revisit completing the northern half of Inland Rail.

Without Inland Rail reaching Queensland, we won’t get as much benefit back from upgrading inland freight tracks from Melbourne to central NSW, underway now.

Our current approach to transport funding favours roads and urban rail projects. Rail freight – which gets trucks off the road and better connects our regional communities with our cities – keeps being shortchanged.

Until we strike a better balance, we will continue to be as vulnerable to future oil shocks as we are today.

Read more: More than ever, it’s time to upgrade the Sydney–Melbourne railway

Philip Laird owns shares in some transport companies and has received funding from the two rail-related cooperative research centres, as well as from the Australian Research Council. He is affiliated with the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport, the Railway Technical Society of Australasia and the Rail Futures Institute. The opinions expressed are those of the author.

Some time earlier this year, an employee at tech giant Meta built a system to track how much each staff member was using artificial intelligence (AI).

Named “Claudeonomics” after the Claude chatbot, the system created a leaderboard ranked by the number of tokens each user was exchanging with AI models, with leaders given titles such as “Token Legend”. (Tokens are tiny chunks of text, each around four characters long, that language models use for processing.)

Meta is not alone in its fascination with “tokenmaxxing”: AI labs OpenAI and Anthropic, e-commerce company Shopify, and tech investment firm Sequoia capital are all reportedly monitoring AI usage and rewarding heavy users, some of whom burn billions of tokens in a week.

Reducing a person’s performance to a single metric can be appealing for management in large corporations. But the choice of what to measure isn’t a neutral one – and if we’re not careful, it can start to rewrite our vision of what we actually value.

The score keeps the score

One of the more full-throated advocates of tokenmaxxing is Jensen Huang, chief executive of chipmaker Nvidia, who envisions a future in which tech employees negotiate high token budgets and consume tokens at rates commensurate with their salaries. Around 80% of those tokens are currently processed via Nvidia’s chips, so Huang’s enthusiasm makes sense.

But is token consumption a helpful metric for those of us who do not profit directly from AI processing volume?

In a recent book, The Score, philosopher C. Thi Nguyen analyses the rise of metrics throughout modern society and offers some helpful insights.

As Nguyen emphasises, what we measure shapes our goals. We develop metrics as tools of convenience; they standardise our measurement of values so we can compare large numbers of otherwise disparate things.

This standardisation comes at the expense of variation and distinctiveness, Nguyen argues. In business, it can make workers seem interchangeable.

Determining which employees in a large organisation are consuming the most tokens in a week is fairly straightforward. But it tells us nothing about the quality or impact of their work.

Bad metrics, bad results

In the past, questionable metrics have contributed to dramatically bad outcomes.

Prior to the 2008 global financial crisis, for example, many financial institutions had sophisticated systems of measures designed to incentivise selling as many loans as possible, as quickly as possible. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many of those loans turned out to be far riskier than anyone realised.

Nguyen emphasises that these types of metrics can tempt us into thinking they are unavoidable. But one of the central lessons of moral philosophy is that we ought to pause at moments like these and ask a couple of basic questions: what is a good life, and what values are actually worth chasing?

Huang and others usually don’t present tokenmaxxing as an answer to these question. But that’s how it functions. What is worth devoting your professional and creative energy to? Simple: grinding through tokens.

A new vision of the good life?

Silicon Valley has, of late, produced a striking number of manifestos and quasi-constitutions.

Consider Anthropic’s Claude’s Constitution, published in January 2026, which sets out the company’s aspirations for its model’s values and speech. Or look at venture capitalist Marc Andreessen’s Techno-Optimist Manifesto, which makes the case for ambitiously accelerating technological advancements in the service of promoting human flourishing.

Some of the most influential texts in the history of moral and political philosophy take this form. Thomas Jefferson wrote one – the US Declaration of Independence. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote another – The Communist Manifesto.

One way to view these Silicon Valley proclamations, and trends like tokenmaxxing, is as repackaging familiar commonplaces of corporate life – recasting mission statements and key performance indicators in a loftier register. But another is to see them as attempts to do something far more ambitious: sketch the outlines of a new and far-reaching vision of the good life.

On that view, the metrics used to measure progress against the vision matter. Tokenmaxxing, for example, is already creeping beyond the bounds of the tech industry – one report from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania suggests many organisations are prioritising staff AI usage and spending as metrics.

Metrics can be useful – if we’re careful

Metrics do have their place in an ordered and complex society. There are many instances in which we might happily defer to the scores produced by simple metrics, trading nuance for convenience. Aggregate ratings on product or restaurant review sites, for example, can simplify our decision-making, even if they aren’t tailored to our specific preferences.

The problem is what Nguyen calls “value capture” – when we uncritically allow external metrics to determine our own goals and behaviour. Resisting this process involves questioning what is being measured and reframing it.

Instead of counting tokens, for example, we might use an equivalent metric such as energy consumption. Energymaxxing might sound more like conspicuous wastage, rather than improved performance.

Counting tokens is one measure of AI activity, which is itself intended as a measure of productivity, which in turn leaves aside the question of what is being produced. Not only is tokenmaxxing a dubious metric in itself, but it may also distort our vision of what matters.

Victoria Lorrimar receives funding from the John Templeton Foundation.

Tim Smartt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Warning: this article is about stillbirth and its investigations, including autopsies and related procedures.

About six babies are stillborn in Australia every day – an incredibly difficult time for families.

Understandably, they want to know why their baby died. But for one in three stillbirths in Australia, we don’t have a reason, often because the death was not fully investigated.

I’m a perinatal pathologist, a specialist medical doctor and part of the team that investigates a stillbirth. Our role is to try to determine why a baby died, if the problem could recur in another pregnancy, and what might happen differently next time.

Here’s what I want you to know about these investigations, the options, and what happens afterwards.

Read more: What’s the difference between miscarriage and stillbirth?

The placenta is like a diary

The placenta is the diary of the pregnancy and is an essential part of investigating a stillbirth.

In Australia, a stillbirth is the death of a baby in the womb at 20 or more completed weeks’ gestation or a birthweight of 400 grams if the gestation is unknown.

Examining the placenta first involves a visual inspection, then weighing and measuring it. From that, we can see if the placenta is the correct size for the baby’s age and if there are any obvious abnormalities that may explain why the baby died, such as a big blood clot.

The visual inspection guides which small samples are taken to look at under the microscope. Other samples are sent to the lab to see if there is an infection or a genetic reason to explain the stillbirth.

We can return the placenta to you if you wish after the tests are done.

Examining the placenta is considered the most useful investigation, not only to explain a stillbirth but also to direct future pregnancy care. Abnormal changes in the placenta have been reported in 23–96% of stillbirths, depending on a variety of factors.

What’s an autopsy?

Perinatal pathologists, like myself, may perform an autopsy (also known as a postmortem). This is a type of operation or medical procedure to investigate how your baby died. We take the same care as an operation on a living baby.

An autopsy helps identify a cause of death in 16–42% of stillbirths. Even if no cause of death is found, an autopsy still provides useful information about what did not cause the stillbirth.

The investigations performed during an autopsy will depend on the family’s wishes and can only go ahead with your consent – a legal, voluntary and informed process.

The next of kin (usually the mother) is given written information and spends time talking to her doctor and/or midwife so she can choose the extent of the investigations she feels comfortable allowing for her baby.

There are different types of autopsies and investigations.

Full autopsy

This is where the perinatal pathologist reviews all the clinical history and maternal investigations (such as blood tests), and looks at the external and internal features of the baby, always treating the baby with utmost respect.

A surgical incision of the skin is made so organs such as the heart, lungs, liver, and kidneys can be examined in detail. Small samples of these organs may be taken and looked at under a microscope for any changes that may explain why the baby died.

The skin incision is stitched and covered with a dressing so it cannot be seen when the baby has clothes on.

If the family and clinical team think it is important to look at the baby’s brain, this is done by a surgical incision on the scalp.

Swabs are taken to look for infection and other samples may be taken to look for genetic or metabolic problems.

Other types of autopsies and investigations

A limited autopsy means one region of the baby is looked at (for example, just the brain or heart). A minimally invasive autopsy means a sample of a specific organ (say the liver) may be taken with a small needle but with no surgical incisions of the skin.

An external examination involves measurements, external photographs, and close examination of the external features of the baby, but no examination of the internal organs. Radiology (X-rays or MRI) may be done as part of the external examination.

What happens next?

An autopsy report, prepared by the perinatal pathologist, usually takes six to 12 weeks to put together. This report is a synthesis of all the information gained from the autopsy and other investigations.

A multidisciplinary team reviews the findings. These findings then guide discussions with the parents, provides learning points for the care team, and helps inform any future planned pregnancies. Parents are given a copy of the report.

After an autopsy families can see, touch and hold their baby if they wish. The perinatal pathologists work with families to support their cultural needs and sensitivities related to examination of their baby and the placenta.

Perinatal pathologists, like myself, aim to uncover the truth and provide answers. There is warmth and kindness behind the work we do, even though sadly death is a constant.

If this article raises issues for you or someone you know, contact the Red Nose 24/7 Grief and Loss Support Line on 1300 308 307 or visit the Red Nose website for information and support.

Jane Dahlstrom is affiliated with the Centre of Research Excellence in Stillbirth and the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia. She is an honorary Anatomical Pathologist at ACT Pathology, Canberra Health Services.

Governments have spent about a year announcing new policies to make early education safer for Australian children.

In the wake of reports of shocking abuse and neglect in daycare centres, there have been moves to improve training and screening of educators, as well as more centre inspections.

All of these measures have been implemented in response to a crisis. Amid significant community concern about childcare safety, early childhood experts and peak bodies have also been calling for a commission to drive long-term strategic reform.

Ahead of the 2026 federal budget, Education Minister Jason Clare announced plans for a new national commission for early education and care. He told reporters, the idea is

to build on the safety reforms that we’ve already implemented, and help to make sure that the system works better than it does today.

If designed well, there is potential to go beyond addressing the immediate crisis. A national commission could fundamentally reshape the early childhood sector.

What has been announced?

Before anyone gets too excited, the commission is still at the “consideration” stage. The federal government says it will consult with state governments and stakeholders about how a commission would work.

This follows a 2024 Productivity Commission report, which recommended a national independent early education and care commission. The report noted while there are a number of government entities and peak bodies across the sector, “there is no dedicated body that monitors the system’s performance against its objectives”.

It said a new commission should be an independent watchdog and evidence hub, to complement current regulatory efforts at both national and state levels.

In 2023, the South Australian Royal Commission into Early Childhood Education and Care similarly noted the need for a national long-term vision for the sector.

What could a commission do?

The safety and quality problems we are seeing right now cannot be addressed through tighter regulation alone.

Current concerns around safety and quality are tied to the sector’s ongoing workforce challenges.

This includes concerns about workforce shortages, pay and conditions, training quality, heavy workloads, and educator wellbeing.

A national commission could focus on how all these issues connect – and impact on child safety and education quality. It could gather consistent data to inform long-term planning, monitor progress against national commitments, and provide governments with independent advice that cuts across jurisdictional boundaries.

What is needed to make this work?

To be effective, the commission would need to be legislated, independent and adequately resourced.

The Productivity Commission report noted a commission could hold governments to account for the performance of the sector. Professor Deborah Brennan, associate commissioner of the 2024 Productivity Commission inquiry, has also called for a commission to “give detailed consideration to the most effective ways to expand not-for-profit provision”. This call is grounded in evidence that large for-profit services tend to provide lower quality education and care.

The commission would also need to cover the entire sector, across all service and provider types and all jurisdictions. This includes private, public, not-for-profit and for-profit services. It requires a clear mandate, particularly in how it would interact with other government bodies and support national data collection.

If it is going to work – and use the best information available – it also needs to meaningfully involve educators’ experiences and voices.

What now?

Establishing a commission is not the entire answer. There is also an urgent need to improve educator-child ratios. And educators need to be paid and treated like professionals who provide quality early childhood education and keep children safe. If given the right powers and within its mandate, a commission could support these goals.

Done right, a national commission could represent a genuine shift from reactive policy and “bandaid solutions” to a long-term, whole-of-system vision for a sector more than one million families depend on every day.

Marianne Fenech receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Erin Harper does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Australia is in the midst of an electric vehicle boom. The combined rise of battery electric, plug-in hybrids and conventional hybrid cars is steadily shifting the long-term market dominance of petrol and diesel.

This is good news for reducing transport emissions, but what might it mean for socioeconomic inequality?

Two years ago, we examined more than two decades of rooftop solar installations across Australia to see what made people get solar panels.

We found income and education mattered, but less than we had expected. And one finding stood out: households facing economic uncertainty were more likely to install solar panels. Areas with higher unemployment actually installed solar faster, perhaps as a way to reduce energy bills.

We wondered if electric vehicle (EV) purchases would tell a similar story. But our latest research suggests the opposite, at least for early adopters.

The first to buy EVs were wealthy

When we looked households that bought EVs in New South Wales between 2017 and 2021, a clear picture emerges. Unlike solar panels, EV uptake was overwhelmingly concentrated among higher-income households.

Our research, across 673 postcodes across NSW, used a combined measure of income and mortgage payments as a proxy for financial capacity. This reflects how many non-essential purchases households can afford. Wealth turned out to be the strongest predictor of electric vehicle uptake. For each step up in this measure, registrations roughly doubled.

This tells us something important: buying an EV is still largely determined by the ability to manage the upfront cost.

EVs follow car use

The next strongest factor influencing EV purchase is how many people in an area own cars. Suburban areas where households rely heavily on private vehicles showed much higher uptake. Dense inner-city areas showed less. This suggests EVs are not replacing car use. They are following it.

The geography makes this even clearer. Around 85% of EV registrations were concentrated in Greater Sydney, particularly in the affluent eastern suburbs and the Lower North Shore. Western Sydney and most regional areas remained largely absent from the transition.

This reflects a broader reality many Australians will recognise. Wealthier areas tend to have better access to infrastructure, shorter commutes and more flexibility in household budgets.

In areas where more people walk or cycle, we found electric vehicle adoption was also lower. This makes sense: if you rely less on a car, switching to an electric one is simply less urgent.

Our findings suggest where good alternatives exist, such as safe cycling infrastructure, people are less dependent on cars. In these areas, demand for vehicles was lower, regardless of whether they were electric or petrol.

In car-dependent areas, however, the pattern was different. There, electrification largely followed existing habits rather than changing them.

Why this matters

In our earlier research, households under financial pressure were more likely to adopt solar as a way to manage energy costs.

The pattern for EVs, at least for early adopters, is the opposite.

They were bought first by households with more financial capacity, showing not all clean technologies spread through society in the same way. Some are taken up by those looking for savings and security, others by those who can afford the initial investment.

Australia is now entering a faster phase of EV uptake. Decisions made today will shape who benefits most from this transition.

Without targeted support, the shift to EVs risks reinforcing existing socioeconomic inequalities. Households that can afford to switch will benefit from lower running costs, while those who cannot will remain exposed to rising fuel prices.

We are already seeing how global events affect this. Disruptions to oil supply, such as the Strait of Hormuz, can quickly push petrol prices higher. Some households can afford to move away from fossil fuels. Others are locked into them.

Greener transport should not be only for the affluent

Electric vehicles are a key part of Australia’s climate plans.

But this early evidence suggests the transition could widen, not narrow, inequality. First and foremost, reducing reliance on private cars altogether should be part of the solution.

Targeted EV policies are also needed. Subsidies for different income groups could help reduce the upfront cost of electric vehicles. And expanding charging infrastructure beyond inner-city areas would make EVs more practical for a wider range of households. Regional and lower-income communities, in particular, are likely to require different approaches.

Without these steps, EVs risk remaining a technology for the affluent.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

The message to students used to be simple: “Just say no.”

But in today’s schools, that message is not only outdated, it may be part of the problem.

Across Canada, student substance use is a growing concern. According to the most recent national student survey, 15 per cent of students in Grades 7-12 reported vaping in the past month, and 18 per cent identified using multiple substances at the same time. Many Grade 7 students could not identify the health risks of substances they can easily access.

Schools want to respond more effectively. But many are doing so without a clear roadmap.

New standard based on evidence

A new cross-Canada standard, to be officially launched soon, aims to change that. It sets out what evidence-informed substance use prevention, education and intervention should look like from kindergarten through Grade 12 (K-12).

Rather than prescribing a single program, it provides a shared, evidence-informed framework, outlining the principles, practices and structures that are most likely to make a difference. And it’s designed to complement what provinces, territories and districts are already doing.

But the standard on its own won’t change what happens in schools. Without system-level support, even the best guidance risks sitting on a shelf.

Our national survey of more than 200 K–12 administrators highlights the gap. Nearly 90 per cent reported frequent student substance use challenges in schools, with vaping as the top concern. While almost two-thirds said they were willing to change their approach, far fewer felt they had the evidence, resources or support to do so effectively.

Without clear alternatives, many schools default to familiar responses, particularly zero-tolerance policies that can lead to suspension or expulsion — approaches that can sever the very connections that help buffer young people from substance use harms in the first place.

This isn’t a failing of individual educators. It’s a systems problem.

The new standard responds to the realities young people are navigating today, including the proliferation of vaping, the legalization of cannabis and an increasingly toxic drug supply. Without shared guidance, current approaches vary widely, and many still rely on scare tactics and abstinence-only messaging, which decades of research show don’t have a lasting impact.

The challenge extends beyond the classroom. Our analysis of nearly a decade of Canadian news coverage found that youth substance use is often framed as an individual problem, with young people portrayed as a threat to themselves.

Missing from these narratives are the broader social and structural factors that shape their substance use. This framing makes it harder for schools to adopt approaches that are more supportive, and ultimately, more effective.

How the new standard is different

The new standard was developed through a national partnership between Wellstream: The Canadian Centre for Innovation in Child and Youth Mental Health and Substance Use at the University of British Columbia, the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction and the Canadian Association of School System Administrators.

Physical Health and Education Canada and the Students Commission of Canada joined to support a robust implementation strategy. Educators, researchers, health professionals and Indigenous interest holders all contributed.

Young people also helped shape this work from the beginning. Youth were part of the technical committee and student voices are embedded as a guiding principle. Research shows that youth-partnered approaches are more relevant, more effective and better aligned with real-world experiences.

Different ages, different strategies

At its core, the standard recognizes a simple but often overlooked reality: What works for a 10-year-old will not work for a 17-year-old.

The new standard is organized around developmental stages and tiers of support. Rather than offering a one-size-fits-all program, it outlines what effective practice looks like in terms of prevention, education and intervention — from building foundational social-emotional skills in early grades to providing targeted supports for older students who are already using substances.

The evidence is clear that effective approaches must evolve with development. Younger children benefit most from building personal competencies. Early adolescents respond to social norms approaches. Older adolescents require strategies focused on social influence and navigating life transitions.

Our own overview of systematic reviews and meta-analysis confirmed that existing programs tend to produce only modest effects, partly because success is often defined too narrowly as abstinence. The new standard broadens this lens, emphasizing outcomes such as well-being, school connectedness and help-seeking.

Read more: Vaping in schools: Ontario’s $30 million for surveillance and security won’t address student needs

It also calls for a shift away from punitive responses. When a student is found vaping, suspension may remove the behaviour temporarily, but it doesn’t address the underlying issue and can push them further away from help. In fact, long-term research shows that practices such as exclusionary discipline and increased police presence in schools are associated with higher rates of substance use over time.

Instead, the new standard emphasizes restorative approaches and support plans that prioritize health, safety and continued engagement in school.

What schools need to make this work

Even the strongest standard cannot succeed without the right conditions for implementation.

Educators are already stretched thin. Without dedicated time, resources and training, this risks becoming another well-intentioned but underused initiative.

Read more: Solving teacher shortages depends on coming together around shared aspirations for children

To support implementation, the standard is accompanied by a self-assessment tool that helps schools identify where their existing practices align with the evidence and where there are opportunities to grow. Rather than functioning as an audit, it’s designed to support continuous improvement, allowing schools to set priorities based on their own context.

But meaningful change will require new tools and investment: time for professional learning, dedicated staff roles and stronger partnerships between education and health systems.

Supporting materials are in development to help bridge this gap. They include training resources, informational materials for school boards, families and students, a network of experienced practitioners and briefs showing how the standard connects to existing international, national and provincial frameworks.

The message to students can no longer be reduced to “just say no.”

Supporting young people today requires approaches that reflect the complexity of their lives — grounded in evidence, connection and care. Schools are ready to move beyond outdated responses. Now education systems must support them in doing so.

Reg Klassen, executive director at Canadian Association of School System Administrators and Ryan Fahey, manager, programs and education, at Physical and Health Education Canada co-authored this story.

This initiative was supported by funding from the Canadian Institutes for Health Research and the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction through its federal funding. The standard was developed under the management of CSA Group.

Emily Jenkins receives funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research through their Canada Research Chairs program.

Recently, a spate of news coverage has raised concerns about grade inflation in schools across Canada.

These concerns stem in part from policies stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic, when there was widespread cancellation of large-scale tests, freezing of grades during school closures and “compassionate” grading practices that accounted for students’ personal situations.

Read more: What will happen to school grades during the coronavirus pandemic?

Together, these changes led to a spike in average student grades and spurred ongoing worries about grade inflation.

But these concerns aren’t new. Grades have been steadily rising in the United States and Canada for decades. Harvard University’s grade point average, for example, has risen almost every year since the 1950s. So just how serious is post-pandemic grade inflation?

What is grade inflation?

Grade inflation refers to the tendency for students to receive higher grades over time, on average.

Put simply, work that might have been awarded an 85 per cent in 1990 might now receive 90 per cent. The implicit assumption is that this rise in grades is unearned and that student performance has not actually improved.

If grades lose their signalling power — that is, if students, families, universities and employers cannot trust grades or no longer know what they mean — then selection, promotion and other important decisions get undermined.

The facts behind grade inflation

Most studies about grade inflation find that students’ average grades have increased steadily over time. Grade increases during the pandemic are also well-documented.

For example, between 2019 and 2021, average grades for Grade 12 students in the Toronto District School Board increased six per cent. Between 2016 and 2021, the percentage of A-level students taking the ACT, a standardized test for U.S. college admissions, rose more than 13 per cent.

Our search for published studies that document grade inflation in Canada since the pandemic did not yield any findings: there has been no concrete data from Canadian elementary or secondary schools on grades being inflated since 2021.

Current conversations about grade inflation often zero in on the role of grades in college and university admissions because most post-secondary programs use students’ grades in the admissions process.

As a CBC investigation of data from the Council of Ontario Universities has shown, entry averages for Grade 12 students have been rising for some time. Data from the council show that across 16 universities, the median entry grade rose from 81.4 per cent in 2006 to 88.2 per cent in 2021.

The Winnipeg Free Press reports that at the University of Manitoba, 40 per cent of high school students admitted in 2024 had a grade of at least 95 per cent.

Post-secondary supply and demand

But a rising admissions average is different than grade inflation in elementary and secondary school. Increases in university admission averages are a function of multiple factors, most directly supply and demand.

Let’s take the Ontario data as an example. Between 2005 and 2022, the number of applications to Ontario’s universities rose 86.5 per cent. That’s 344,000 more applications. At the same time, the number of students who went on to register also rose, but only by 31.2 per cent.

That means that even if average grades had stayed the same, students with lower grades were increasingly less likely to get admitted because they are competing with more applicants. Demand is outpacing supply.

Avoiding difficult courses

The current supply and demand issue has real consequences on students’ pressure to get higher grades in secondary school. Sixty-one per cent of American teenagers say they feel pressured to get good grades. That focus on grades increases student anxiety and makes students more likely to avoid difficult courses.

Teachers and university instructors also report pressure to give good grades, especially when grades and graduation rates are used to evaluate performance.

These pressures are longstanding — there has always been pressure on students to perform and on teachers to award high grades — but the increased competition for seats in post-secondary provides additional fodder for grade inflation.

Providing additional provincial funding to increase spaces at universities and colleges could help address these pressures.

Why have grades increased?

There are multiple reasons grades increase. First, in almost every province, the share of people graduating high school has been increasing for years.

More high school graduates means more passing grades, which typically results in higher average grades.

And we want students to learn and achieve. On average, secondary school graduates live longer, earn more money and are less likely to be incarcerated.

Shifts in assessment policies, teaching

Second, teachers’ use of evidence-based teaching and assessment strategies is supporting better learning. Shifts in school assessment policies over the past 20 years help students better understand what the learning goals are and what success looks like. These also encourage feedback to close the gap between where students are and their learning goal.

Assessment policies have also separated assessing learning skills and habits from assessing curriculum content knowledge.

Manitoba’s assessment policy, for example, tells teachers to base grades on students’ actual achievement, not on things like effort, participation or attitude.

Such policies acknowledge that docked marks or zeroes are sometimes needed for late or missing work, but caution that such practices may misrepresent student achievement. If grades and behaviour aren’t reported separately, it becomes difficult to know what a “B-” grade represents, for example. It may mean proficient achievement, or it may mean “C-level work with A-level effort,” “A-level work that’s late” or something else.

Schools have also made evidence-based teaching advances, such as using differentiated instructional strategies and culturally responsive teaching. One expected result from these changes should be higher grades.

Is an A still an A?

The purpose of grades is to communicate student achievement. While that purpose is less important than the main purpose of assessment — to improve student learning — students, parents and other stakeholders still depend on grades to make decisions.

Importantly, and contrary to many people’s understanding, teachers don’t grade on a bell curve. There is no limit to the number of As and the quality of learning it represents. In fact, having more students achieving higher grades is good, if the grades are warranted and accurately reflect what students know and are able to do.

Should we be concerned?

Even though the pandemic created a spike in grades, the lack of research since means we do not accurately know the current state of grade inflation or how grades may be assigned differently across different groups of students (for example, across family income, race or gender).

Read more: Are ‘top scholar’ students really so remarkable — or are teachers inflating their grades?

While grades are increasing, they continue to hold their signalling power. Grades can still be trusted alongside other measures to make important decisions.

Even when grades rise, we shouldn’t assume that every rise is unearned or indefensible. The full picture is messier than that.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.