In Australia, are standards about funding, or teaching methods?

[Debbie_Hepplewhite]

Flagged up on another forum, see this piece in 'The Australian' comparing results in China to Australia. See Simon Birmingham's comment about the need for 'back to basics':

Federal election 2016: China’s kids excel at school — at half the cost

Natasha Bita, The Australian, May 12, 2016

Chinese students are trouncing their Australian counterparts in English and maths but cost half as much to educate, the latest data shows, as schools funding becomes a key election issue.

Australia spends $132,945, on average, to educate a student from primary school to Year 10 — double the $66,463 spent on students in Shanghai and 40 per cent more than the $93,630 cost in South Korea, the latest comparative OECD data shows. More than half the students in Shanghai and nearly a third of Korean students top the class internationally in maths — compared with just one in seven Australian students.

One in five Australian students failed the minimum standard in maths in the OECD’s 2012 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), compared with 3 per cent of Shanghai students and 9 per cent of Korean teenagers.

As Bill Shorten talked up Labor’s $3.8 billion cash splash for schools in 2018-19 yesterday, a new report warned that Australia’s students had fallen behind Asian countries despite record spending on education. The Australian Council for Educational Research criticised a widening gap between the performance of rich and poor students, and a ­“residualisation’’ of struggling students in the poorest government schools.

“Australia has increased spending on schools and seen standards decline,’’ council chief executive Geoff Masters said yesterday. “It is of concern that so many Australian 15-year-olds are failing to achieve minimally ­adequate levels of reading and mathematical literacy.

“We cannot keep doing what we have been doing and expect performances to improve. The ­answer is to target resources on effective strategies for arresting the drift in Australia’s schools.’’

Professor Masters said it was too soon to tell if the needs-based schools funding model devised by business leader David Gonski — a long-time friend of Malcolm Turnbull — was making a difference. “It’s possible that if funding is better targeted (through Gonski) to where it will make a difference, performance will improve,’’ he said yesterday. “High-performing countries are focused on trying to reduce disparity between schools so it matters much less what schools students go to. “In Australia the concern is we can see an increase in disparity ­between schools — we’re ending up with low-achieving disadvantaged students being concentrated in particular types of schools.’’

The previous Labor government signed a six-year Gonski funding deal with most states and territories in 2013, worth an extra $9.4bn in federal funding and $5.1bn in extra state funding. The Abbott government cancelled the last two years of the agreement, worth $4.5bn in federal funding.

Labor is promising to spend the missing $4.5bn, while the Coalition promised $1.2bn in extra funding between 2017 and 2019 in last week’s federal budget.

Disadvantaged schools only began receiving their Gonski funds in 2014 and the results of last year’s PISA exam — which tested half a million 15-year-old students in 70 industrialised countries — will not be known until December.

Labor last night began sending out emails with an in-built calculator for voters to work out “how much Turnbull cut from your school’’, based on the difference between Labor and Coalition spending promises.

The Opposition Leader declared yesterday that Australia’s plummeting performance was “not good enough’’.

“If you look at the success of the emerging nations of our region, they are increasing investment in schools,’’ Mr Shorten said. “If we want to be a smart and successful nation, we need to be an educated nation.”

Opposition education spokeswoman Kate Ellis said a Labor government would spend $4.8m on “targeted teaching’’.

The council report says fewer Australian students are studying advanced maths and science subjects in high school, while 40,000 teenagers failed the minimum international standard for reading at the age of 15. It says teachers are required to teach too much content in a “crowded curriculum”.

The federal and state governments approved a pared-back national curriculum, with a greater focus on phonics-based literacy, for primary school late last year but it has yet to take effect in most classrooms.

The Australian’s analysis of Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development data shows a strong link between attending preschool and success in high school.

Barely half the Australian teenagers who took the PISA test in 2012 had attended preschool for more than a year, compared to 88 per cent of students in Shanghai, 90 per cent in Singapore, 97 per cent in Japan and 83 per cent in Korea.

The OECD data reveals that a third of Australian teenagers skip classes or wag school — 10 times the rate in Shanghai.

The US spends even more than Australia — $157,270 to educate a child to Year 10 — yet its students performed even worse.

Singapore spends slightly less than Australia — $115,665 per child — yet its students are twice as likely to top the tests in maths and reading.

Federal Education Minister Simon Birmingham yesterday said the council report “smacks down’’ Labor’s big-spending approach to education.

“We need to focus on what actually makes a difference for our students because, while spending on Australian schools has increased, the results of our students has gone backwards,’’ he said. Senator Birmingham said the Coalition’s “back to basics’’ education policy would improve outcomes in literacy, numeracy, the STEM.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/federal ... aeca5ae857

[Debbie_Hepplewhite]

Further, there is this piece in 'The Age':

What is the problem with Australian schools?

http://www.theage.com.au/national/what- ... 511-gosmbw