Australian schools are in ‘absolute decline’ globally, says PISA report

A global report on educational performance shows Australian 15-year-olds are getting worse at maths, science and reading.

About half a million students from 72 countries took part in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2015, including more than 14,000 Australian children.

Australia was significantly outperformed by nine countries, ranking just below New Zealand, well below Japan and Canada, and just above the United Kingdom and Germany.

Singapore’s students ranked highest.

Dr Sue Thompson from the Australian Council for Education Research collected the Australian data and said local academic performance was in “absolute decline”.

“The proportion of high achievers is decreasing and the proportion of low achievers is increasing,” she said.

“Basically what’s happening there is everything’s sliding backwards if you like — our strong kids aren’t as strong as they were and our weak kids are actually weaker than they were.”

Federal Education Minister Simon Birmingham said the country could not afford to “continue to slip behind”.

“Our children are no longer learning at the same rates through their school education as they used to and that is obviously unacceptable to governments, as it would be to parents, teachers and everybody across Australia,” he said.
NT and Tasmania below OECD average

The Australian Capital Territory topped the rankings with Western Australia not far behind.

Only the Northern Territory and Tasmanian students ranked below the average of the 35 OECD countries including places like Canada, Netherlands, New Zealand, the UK and the USA.

Private and Catholic schools outperform public schools

While all school sectors in Australia have marked declining results since 2003, private and Catholic institutions continue to outperform the public schools.

“This is not surprising,” Australian Education Union’s deputy federal president Maurie Mulheron said.

“The Gonski review said this is exactly what would happen.”

“ said that if we did not act as a nation to redress the imbalance between advantaged and disadvantaged students then we would slip down in international ranking,” he said.

The gap between rich and poor schools were what the Gonski model was supposed to fix, Opposition education spokeswoman Tanya Plibersek said.

“Our results have become worse as our education system has become more inequitable,” she said.

Mr Birmingham said school funding had gone up to record levels “yet performance has gone backwards”.

“It really is time to end the politicking about money,” he said.
First-generation students had best results

PISA examines whether immigrant students get the same education as students born locally.

Australia had some possibly surprising results, with Australian-born students faring worse than their first-generation counterparts who had at least one parent born overseas.

> Gonski report … Gonski review

So, was the Gonski report a piece of rubbish or not?
https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/aeu/pages/1/attachments/original/1393387838/Gonski_Final_Report_2012.pdf?1393387838

Let’s look.
Looking through the chapter titles of the 319 page report, it looks like a piece of waste paper to me. All it seems to do is to list what sources of funding are available and identify “disadvantaged” individuals. Period.

There’s no significant information on the curriculum or on needs of industry or on how technology has affected education or on aging of equipment.

Also, seeing that implementation of the report has led to Australian education getting worse rather than better …

“Neil Mitchell has clashed with a teacher after hearing hundreds will be wearing t-shirts with pro-refugee slogans in the classroom.
The group, called Teachers For Refugees, has distributed shirts for teachers to wear.
3AW Mornings understands Hume Central Secondary, Williamstown High, St Albans Secondary, Footscray City High and Ascot Vale Community Centre are among several Victorian schools involved.”

While our young’uns might be falling behind in the three Rs and science they will kick the rest of the world’s ass in political studies by the time they leave and try and get a job.

Peak Warming Man said:

“Neil Mitchell has clashed with a teacher after hearing hundreds will be wearing t-shirts with pro-refugee slogans in the classroom.
The group, called Teachers For Refugees, has distributed shirts for teachers to wear.
3AW Mornings understands Hume Central Secondary, Williamstown High, St Albans Secondary, Footscray City High and Ascot Vale Community Centre are among several Victorian schools involved.”

While our young’uns might be falling behind in the three Rs and science they will kick the rest of the world’s ass in political studies by the time they leave and try and get a job.

They won’t even try.

Peak Warming Man said:

“Neil Mitchell has clashed with a teacher after hearing hundreds will be wearing t-shirts with pro-refugee slogans in the classroom.
The group, called Teachers For Refugees, has distributed shirts for teachers to wear.
3AW Mornings understands Hume Central Secondary, Williamstown High, St Albans Secondary, Footscray City High and Ascot Vale Community Centre are among several Victorian schools involved.”

While our young’uns might be falling behind in the three Rs and science they will kick the rest of the world’s ass in political studies by the time they leave and try and get a job.

Neil Mitchell said the teachers were well-entitled to hold their own political views, but is concerned they will be “ramming it” down the throats of their students.

He clashed with Mark Goudkamp, one of the groups leaders.

“To me, it’s pretty obvious where you stand,” Neil Mitchell said on 3AW.

“It’s pretty clear to the students that you’re not independent in your assessment.

“You’re well entitled to those views, but my nervousness is that you’ll take them into the classroom and blatantly lobby kids.”

But Mr Goudkamp said that wouldn’t be the case and that both sides of the argument would be presented in the classroom.

“I obviously have my own strong personal views, but I want them to come to a conclusion on their own accord,” he said.

——-

So maybe a good lesson in critical thinking.

:-)

“I obviously have my own strong personal views, but I want them to come to a conclusion on their own accord,” he said

Probably better if he gets them to come to a conclusion on pi or conjugating a verb.

Wonder what the reaction would be if teachers wore stop the boats tshirts and had a little Aussie flag lapel pin?

Peak Warming Man said:

“I obviously have my own strong personal views, but I want them to come to a conclusion on their own accord,” he said

Probably better if he gets them to come to a conclusion on pi or conjugating a verb.

Declining education standards have got nothing to do with teachers.

AwesomeO said:

Wonder what the reaction would be if teachers wore stop the boats tshirts and had a little Aussie flag lapel pin?

the alt-right would have conniptions.

>conjugating a verb.

never tried it

transition said:

>conjugating a verb.

never tried it

Verballing used to be all the go in Queensland.

Peak Warming Man said:

transition said:

>conjugating a verb.

never tried it

Verballing used to be all the go in Queensland.

nice

So we looked

Whole language is a philosophy of reading and a discredited educational method originally developed for teaching literacy in English to young children. The method became a major model for education in the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and the UK in the 1980s and 1990s, despite there being no scientific support for the method’s effectiveness. It is based on the premise that learning to read English comes naturally to humans, especially young children, in the same way that learning to speak develops naturally.

and wondered, how did Australia manage to escape¿

(We mean escape being mentioned, since we’re sure people were trying out whole language BS around here, though maybe Australia managed to escape the whole f’g whole language disaster the other places screwed themselves with.)

Then this.

In December 2005, the Australian government endorsed the teaching of synthetic phonics and discredited the whole language approach (“on its own”). Its Department of Education, Science and Training published a National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy. The report states: “The evidence is clear, whether from research, good practice observed in schools, advice from submissions to the Inquiry, consultations, or from Committee members’ own individual experiences, that direct systematic instruction in phonics during the early years of schooling is an essential foundation for teaching children to read.” See Synthetic phonics § Acceptance in Australia.

LOL

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_language

So how has the global decline in Australian education been going since 2016?

The Rev Dodgson said:

So how has the global decline in Australian education been going since 2016?

Queensland academics say it’s fine because if you don’t bother trying then coming last is a cause for celebration¡

https://theconversation.com/yes-australias-pisa-test-results-may-be-slipping-but-new-findings-show-most-students-didnt-try-very-hard-172050

SCIENCE said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

So how has the global decline in Australian education been going since 2016?

Queensland academics say it’s fine because if you don’t bother trying then coming last is a cause for celebration¡

https://theconversation.com/yes-australias-pisa-test-results-may-be-slipping-but-new-findings-show-most-students-didnt-try-very-hard-172050

In seriousness though good question so we went to the official sources

and note that we increased the amount of SCIENCE we taught in around 2009, then decreased the amount of SCIENCE we taught in around 2018, so we guess we should stop teaching reading and mathematics as well oh wait we don’t really do much of that oh shit.

https://www.oecd.org/en/about/programmes/pisa/australia.html

https://www.acer.org/au/pisa

SCIENCE said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

So how has the global decline in Australian education been going since 2016?

Queensland academics say it’s fine because if you don’t bother trying then coming last is a cause for celebration¡

https://theconversation.com/yes-australias-pisa-test-results-may-be-slipping-but-new-findings-show-most-students-didnt-try-very-hard-172050

You don’t need to try hard at PISA unless you’ll be working at Domino’s.

Most of those kids will working at Subway and KFC.

Bubblecar said:

SCIENCE said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

So how has the global decline in Australian education been going since 2016?

Queensland academics say it’s fine because if you don’t bother trying then coming last is a cause for celebration¡

https://theconversation.com/yes-australias-pisa-test-results-may-be-slipping-but-new-findings-show-most-students-didnt-try-very-hard-172050

You don’t need to try hard at PISA unless you’ll be working at Domino’s.

Most of those kids will working at Subway and KFC.

be

SCIENCE said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

So how has the global decline in Australian education been going since 2016?

Queensland academics say it’s fine because if you don’t bother trying then coming last is a cause for celebration¡

https://theconversation.com/yes-australias-pisa-test-results-may-be-slipping-but-new-findings-show-most-students-didnt-try-very-hard-172050

The kids understand that:

• if you’re goingto the right school, with the right people who have the right parents, you don’t have to try

• if you’re not going to the right school, then there’s probably not much point in trying.

captain_spalding said:

SCIENCE said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

So how has the global decline in Australian education been going since 2016?

Queensland academics say it’s fine because if you don’t bother trying then coming last is a cause for celebration¡

https://theconversation.com/yes-australias-pisa-test-results-may-be-slipping-but-new-findings-show-most-students-didnt-try-very-hard-172050

The kids understand that:

• if you’re goingto the right school, with the right people who have the right parents, you don’t have to try

• if you’re not going to the right school, then there’s probably not much point in trying.
  

And if your father is one of the chaps you’ll go to boarding school.

LOL

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-12-04/australian-students-maths-science-international-rankings-timss/104682586