The fact that education is one of our biggest exports seems to be the author's main reason for believing that Australian education standards are so high.

But most of these 'exports' are from international students coming to Australia to learn ESL.

So that's no positive reflection on our primary and secondary schools.

Furthermore, in Asia and the Middle East, Australians are recruited to teach English - alongside Brits, Candians, Americans and New Zealanders. There's nothing special about us I'm afraid.

I recall reading in The Australian that whilst government funding per student had increased greatly since the 1960's, educational standards since then had dropped. So I'm afraid the news is not that good.

Australia has lower literacy rates than other developed nations. In Germany, they have 99% literacy among adults. Australia has far less than this.

As I result, I still believe that education reform is needed.

Just to correct some very dangerous stereotypes -

* at least in South Australia (which usually shows the way), the number of Indigenous students completing Year 12 has risen SIX TIMES since the late nineties - probably in urban areas, the number has gone up ten times;

* nationally, more than twenty five thousand Indigenous people have completed tertiary studies - that's about one in every nine adults aged 20-60; given the demographic pattern since the eighties, this number is set to double by 2020, and double again by 2034;

* Indigenous women are commencing tertiary studies at a BETTER rate than non-Indigenous men.

Yes, I agree that there is a scandalous situation in remote settlement schools and - as with so many other dimensions - the data should always be differentiated, into urban and remote situations, for a start. But since about 1999, the Year 12 and the tertiary stats have improved markedly.

When we take into account three overlapping factors, that, as Professor Dodson pointed out, a third of the Indigenous population is illiterate, that Indigenous people are overwhelmingly in the under- or working class, and that some 20 % still live in rural areas, surely these improvements are remarkable. It certainly isn't all doom and gloom in Indigenous education: there are ways, we don't need to shake our heads at the futility of it all.

"A lot has happened in Australian education in the last five years, and much of it should quell the fears of the partisan right, if they only will listen:"
"And while I disagree with both its form and methods, the MySchool website appears to be a hit with parents"
So what should I be listening to?

Yes well interesting. Hard subject to really make such firm conclusions on but here we go. I am not an educator myself but as a parent and a member of a family of educators i have seen some interesting things. As for the Aussie educators being so popular overseas my understanding is that this is true. Aussie teachers a very popular in the UK. A family member who teaches in the UK explains it as such. Australian teachers are trained to teach, where as UK teachers have a degree in something and then 6 months training then hey presto they are teachers. The government say that these people are smarter industry professionals, the best and brightest, but the problem is they can not teach. no training in child psychology, sociology, class assessment and on and on the years of specific training goes. The big scare here is that we have a government that are threatening the same crap on use back by Australia's most destructive union the teachers federation. Teaching is a science of its own, leave teaching alone. Teach teachers to teach, not retrain failed academics to fill jobs.
Oh yes, the comment about the country school he is off to that has doctors and accountant children mixing with the workers, what crap. Those kids go off to boarding school after primary school don't fool yourself as do the rich graziers kids.

I do not think that it is a matter of our education standards being high,but more the US standards socially and economically being driven into the ground by debt created by the US Federal Reserve which are owned by the likes Rothschilds,Warburgs,Rockerfellers etc.

The fractional reserve system of banking is a scam that must come to an end.It sucks the intelligence out of communities by putting them on the debt cycle,thus individuals work in sweatshop situations and have no time or are too exhausted to learn new skills/knowledge.

Goldstein is just indulging in false bravado at the expense of the realities we all must face.Perhaps Hollywood would be a good option for Goldstein since he is appealing to our vainty rather than confronting the reality.

“Queensland Year 4 students finished last in science and seventh in maths out of Australia's eight states and territories in an international mathematics and science study, it was revealed on Tuesday.

Even students from Russia and the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan performed better.”

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/s...27-952,00.html

THE Group of Eight has declared mathematics education in Australia is in crisis.

Between 2001-2007 the number of mathematics major enrolments in Australian universities fell by approximately 15 per cent.
In contrast from 2002 to 2006 the number of applicants to mathematics degrees in Britain increased by two-thirds.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/equation-for-maths-warns-of-disaster/story-e6frgcjx-1225838873328

None of the above seems to be a part of the “partisan right” as the author wants to term it.

I’m also interested in this by the author.

“Another of the oddities in the critique of Australian education is that people for whom “personal responsibility” is a mantra in other areas of comment seem quite prepared to heap responsibility for every poor grade onto educators. It won't wash with those who value the notion that students must do the work in order to achieve; and that it is families, communities and peers who contribute as much, if not more, to a child's development than do educators.”

Teachers taught the parents and the community, and now, if teachers do not like the parents and the community, then they only have themselves to blame.

It is also noted that teachers never stop asking for more and more taxpayer funding, while at the same time they never stop spending that funding on imports, and never stop using the public as a scapegoat for every failure of the education system.

The education system does not belong to the Australian public.

The Australian public is being used by the education system.

Mercurius Goldstein wrote hursday, 15 April 2010:

>... export of Australian education exceeds that of wool or wheat ...

What s also not realised, is that the hottest e-learning software product "Moodle" is from Australia (the second hottest product "Mahara" is from New Zealand). These two products are changing the way education is done and thought about, around the world. I have just been at Adelaide University for a couple of days discussing how we are going to do professional postgraduate education for computer people: http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2010/04/open-source-tools-for-e-learning.html

This education is "exported" online around the world, with Australian leading the way in how it is done. I have proposed the same techniques also be used for computer education at the vocational level, where Australia sets standards used in some developing countries, in the Indian Ocean region and parts of Africa.

Many of these techniques are also being applied in other unviersity coruses, in secondary and primary schools. The techniques go by fancy names such as "Mentored and Collaborative e-Learning", but in many ways are fundamentally the same as traditional learning techniques made more efficient with the web and mobile phones: http://www.tomw.net.au/technology/it/collaborative_e_learning/

Even some of my more conservative university collogues are starting to understand that you do not have to teach by standing in front of people talking at them and then making them do an exam on paper. As this understanding spreads through the education industry, we will see a dot com type of bubble in online education offerings.

The Australian government is investing hundreds of millions of dollars on infrastructure for e-learning and for upgrading teaching skills. However, what is lacking is any coordinated approach for using this as an export product. The vocational and higher education sectors are treated separately, even though they are using the same software tools and teaching approaches and the customers (students) do not see an difference between the products.