At last clear evidence that Australian schools perform well largely because of the non government sector.

The anti intuitive concept that the left was trying to peddle i.e. that by tearing down the high performing non government sector, that overall standards would improve has been firmly debunked.

Education in Australia could easily be on par with the best if only they'd get teachers from elsewhere. The sad fact is that no amount of education can solve the problem if the same teachers with the same mentality keep brainwashing our kids.

Maths, science and reading are obsolete criteria - nowadays children's education success is measured by how much they believe in, love and worship the government, and the ultimate test: how willing they are to become soldiers and die for their country.

We will have a decent debate about education when we stop citing these nonsense measures. If only education was like an Olympic sprint. It isn't. In whose interest is it that we inflict this banality on our kids? It certainly is not the kids.

As highlighted by this article often facile cross comparisons of international schooling results fail to acknowledge the individuality of country and/or district contributors that influence academic outcomes. Cultural/social conditioners also impact notably when students of Asian families achieve high HSC or VCR results.

Remember also the glowing reports concerning Mr Joel Klein and his efforts to modernise New York schools. Such structures should, of course, transform Australian schooling achievement. We don't hear much of Mr Klein now, either from Canberra politicians or the Murdoch press.

The immaturity (and political agenda) of many Australian education commentators is revealed when they refuse to acknowledge comparatively high outcomes being achieved by non-government school students. Ah yes, but it's all because they recruit from a socio-economic elite and refuse entry to students less gifted intellectually. What rubbish.

Political leaders need to recognize that one third of Australian school students attend non-government schools. If they closely examined these school's operational philosophies perhaps, just perhaps they could inject these school's positives across all school sectors, government and non-government.

Bennery

Quite frankly I don't give a fig about what school scores what. Do a little comparison. Take our new shiny new NSW, oops, I mean National curriculum and put it against the developments taking place on the planet. I challenge anyone to demonstrate that what is currently being trialled is designed for this century. We have a Minister of Education whose knowledge of education one could inscribe on a pin with a pneumatic drill. He could not tell if it was suitable for the 1800's let alone the 2000's.

The 'debate' about education in Oz is like a broken record The hamsterteriat keep running around in the wheel. The same patterns of disadvantage continue to be reproduced. The poor keep being done over by a system that is more about maintenance of bureaucratic control than actually helping teachers, Principals and kids. There is no evidence that the country's policy makers have an educational imagination. To steal a line from an old movie, 'Canberra, we have a problem!'

What mentality is that, individual?

Run hampster, run.

What mentality is that, individual?
Otokonoko,
That one !

If we want to improve educational outcomes, rather than add jobs for teachers & education "experts", it really is quite simple.

All we have to do is study, or simply reintroduce the curriculum, techniques & class sizes that applied in Oz 50 years ago.

My kids [& most of their compatriots], who had every chance [plus some] that I & my compatriots had, have similar IQs & aptitudes, & had much more help at home, & in out of school coaching, came out of school with an much less knowledge than we did. Two achieved OP3 & 4, so were considered high achievers.

I am still being surprised that my daughter, who did the highest levels of math, physics & chemistry, then a science/education BSc still today does not have a knowledge of much that we had when we left high school.

Unfortunately it would still take 30 years or so to fill the schools with teachers as well educated as ours were.

Hasbeen's post highlights the reality of the standard of education these days. I have youngish people around me who can not spell, can't add up, get confused with left-hand vs right hand threaded bolts, metric vs imperial etc. Only a few days ago I asked a chap to bring me an 8 mm spanner, he brought an 18 mm despite having seen the 8 mm bolt to be undone.
Now these are young people who have had the privilege of Govt college education all paid for & even pocket money provided.
Their teachers have mostly retired on extremely handsome Superannuation & this is what we get for it ?
I recall asking one of those teachers twenty five years ago about the cost & point of this education & I was ridiculed of not having any foresight. Yeah right !

individual, I think your most recent post answers my question much more clearly than your actual response to that question - and I agree.

The problem, I think, is that those who 'run with the pack' in our education system - those who ascend to policymaking positions - are unwilling to ask the tough questions, and dismiss those tough questions when they arise.

I think the central question we should be asking when reviewing our education system (which certainly needs considerable review) is 'why do we put our kids through thirteen years of schooling?'

What do we want our education system to achieve? What is the end product we wish to produce? Self-reliant citizens? Compassionate citizens? Effective employees? Knowledgeable people? People prepared for further study? All of these? None of these?

The next question we need to ask is 'how do we achieve these outcomes?'

And we need to be willing to make BIG changes - even a complete overhaul - if necessary. In my opinion, the best education system is not the one that ranks in the Top 5 in PISA or TIMSS or another comparative study. It is the one that best achieves its purpose and serves its community appropriately. If that system happens to score highly on those tests, then that's a nice pat on the back. If not, then those tests are assessing things that are irrelevant to our system.

It seems to me that our government is taking the wrong path. It is seeking to use education as a status symbol rather than a public service. We're going to pour a lot of money into that status symbol and still have graduates who can't distinguish 8mm from 18mm.

Otokonoko,
At every election we hear the education for everyone catch-cry. This has become a real bandwagon thing. It's always about University this & University that. Everyone should have the right to University educations etc etc.
I have nothing against young people going to University, my kid's going too. What I vehemently oppose is this constant reference to education for all when we full well know that only a handful have the brains to get through Uni & be of benefit to society & Nation building.
Instead of striving for higher standards in education the opposite has happened. We now have people with degrees but with less knowledge & competence than a first year trades apprentice of years ago as Hasbeen pointed out. Who is responsible for this severe decline ? I put the blame at Academia & Unions who only have their own interests at heart rather than the country's..
They told us we were wrong even on this forum over the years. It'll be interesting to read their excuses.

Hasbeen makes important points. The quality of education of our teachers. This is one area where the Finnish system is different to ours, not the left vs right politics, but the fact that the smartest people go into education. That is not the case in Australia. Why one needs high scores to get into medicine but not into teaching is a mystery to me.

Just to touch on one issue: the number of primary school teachers who are uncomfortable with primary school maths is, from my limited personal experience through my children, truly scary. How on earth can that be?

Then there is the curriculum and how it is taught. My eldest could do the IB and I'm thankful for that. It relieved a lot of pressure on me to supplement the lack of education.

I get monumentally frustrated whenever we try and discuss education in Australia it turns into a left vs right politics, public vs private school bun fight. Ideas get discounted, not because there is lack in merit, but because it comes from a certain quarter.

Why do private schools in Australia generally have better outcomes? They teach exactly the same curriculum. I know, I've had children in both systems. Private school teachers are taught in the same universities as are public school teachers. There are exceptional teachers and poor teachers in both. So, apart from the swanky school grounds and overpriced school uniforms, wherein lies the difference?

Yvonne,

The difference probably emanates from attitudes within the child's home. Education is not something that only happens in school, it is occurring every waking moment. Parental attitudes and their ability to encourage a child's natural curiosities, facilitate a genuine love of learning and a self-directed discipline in educational pursuits and interests, are perhaps the markers between those who succeed and those who merely go along for the ride.

emanates from attitudes within the child's home.
Poirot,
Yes, definitely. The same however goes for the mentality of the majority of teachers. You see, many teachers get into the profession for the great lurks & perks. I have witnessed this first hand when sharing teachers accommodation for nine months many years ago. All their conversations centred around getting blotto & rave on about how much they can save & how many more days till the next holidays. Never once could I induce them to discuss issues of society with them. I realised 30 years ago that education was de-railing. When I did remark so I copped ridicule & was called a redneck. I'd dearly love to bail these very people up now & tell me again how wrong I was.

Otokonoko,

Could not agree more. The questions you ask are tough ones but it is so important we have these debates. The testing nonsense is just that, nonsense. It's worth mulling where most of the current education practices came from, like age-based classes, the 'disciplines', standardised testing etc. All of these things were developed a very, very long time ago. It was a different world. These practices were developed for very different purposes and, in the case of testing, way back then, they had a very clear sense of how limited testing is. So we have a system designed for a totally different era, run by career bureaucrats whose job is to protect their Minister's butt. It could easily be mistaken for organised child abuse.

The challenges the current cohorts of kids will face in their lifetime will make the challenges of previous generations look like child's play. It would be nice to think that we were doing something that helped prepare them to do life well

Well, Shanghai are doing better than the Finnish?
Really?
Look at the hours spent in classrooms and the Fins are still miles in front?
Look at the rigid discipline and of the school hours of Asians; and ask yourself, if that system would transfer here?
Of course religion and education ought to be kept completely separate, with critical thinking coming first?
The privileged elite can and do hire private tutors for falling behind students? And the better off schools have superior facilities; and, are able to offer higher salaries and better conditions to/for more capable teachers?
I mean, why should we entrench and enshrine privilege, when our finest interests as a nation, are best served, by finding and advancing our best and brightest, rather than the most privileged.
I believe the article was full of, fundamentally flawed thinking or argument?
As if the east Asian system could ever transfer here!?
We punch above our weight in so many areas, but pound for pound, the Fins, a much smaller nation with far fewer resources, outperform us in almost every area of education, and spend far fewer hours doing it!
What the privileged really object to, I believe, is the universalistic reality of the Finnish system, with every student given the same resources and or, the same chance to succeed!
Success should never ever be the result of your socio starting point or circumstances, just the brain you were born with!
The best teachers are the ones that can take something as boring as maths and turn it into an stimulating and interesting fun time, where time simply flies, and no one drops out or skips school!
This is where we should be heading with our curriculum and positive benchmarking for success!
By all means let's study who does what and how well? But, let's not follow anyone, but have them turn and say, let's copy Australia?
Why? Because we can and should set aside all the bete noire rhetoric, and simply focus on better outcomes/improvements for the student body, across the board?
And what could be possibly wrong with that?
Rhrosty.

The best teachers are the ones that can take something as boring as maths and turn it into an stimulating and interesting fun time.
Rhosty,
Who needs best teachers when just teachers would suffice. It's not about the best it's about having teachers in the first place instead of lurk & perk chasers.

Poirot, no nation can afford to only depend on parental interest for the success of the next generation. It is not just about anything as reasonable as the 'rights' of each child for equal opportunity, but simply that we pay for education, through our taxes, and therefore have a right to expect a high quality resource, as in human resource, in an educated population.

The wealth of any nation lies first and foremost in the citizens. Nothing happens without humans doing what needs to be done. From digging stuff out of the Earth, to building houses and bridges, to coming up with new innovations and solutions, to providing governance.

We cannot afford to ignore the consequences of an increasing number of poorly educated Australians.

Hi, Elephant-in-Room here,

Immigration plus women being allowed to have more than one child are creating a population RATE increase. This is why education is failing, along with health, roads, policing, no go suburbs(Auburn) and local government services. Too many newcomers getting politically motivated handouts for overcrowding run-down suburbs and services. Newcomers who kiss-butt politicians while sneering at the taxpaying Australians(Skippys) whose tax pays for their upgraded lives and whose blood sweat and tears paid for the now hopelessly inadequate infrastucture (schools in this case) they so disgracefully take for granted.

Yet the benificiaries of this stupidity, Politicians and mass marketeers like all the fat cat CEOs pulling adds off Jonesy, butt-licking migrants, and multi-baby bonused-up-the-yazoo women think this form of DICTATORSHIP is somehow a wold class democracy.

Well, these emperors in new clothes are stark naked in their Greineresque disregard for decency and human values is OUTED.

The net result is that Australia, despite all the media propaganda that is needed to keep Autralian governments in safe power HAS and will continue to go backwards in education and all other quality of life standards.

To move away from this abrogation of the spirit of demaocracy, Several things must be done:

1. Vote incumbent governments out at every election till the penny drops that this is NOT a bloody dictatorship and that vote rigging via immigration and baby bonusing will NO longer be tolerated

2. All migrants living in Capital cities must pay $300,000 infrastructure levies in a HECS style payment scheme.

3. Women who have had more than one child will no longer get bonuses a nor be able to vote, thus negating the EASY return of pro-pop self serving dictatorial governments.

Without these measures, anyone concerned about future education standards is hereby WARNED:

THIS ISSUE IS NOTHING BUT A POLITICAL FOOTBALL and you will die before any improvements are made.

I lived in Finland in the late 60s. Coming from the UK the contrast in the standards of educational outcomes were stark. Check out girls in supermarkets speaking fluent English and no, they were not Univ students trying to make some money.

The Finns as a nation give great emphasis and reverence to education. I cannot say that about Australia.

What the hell has this got to do with left right politics?

Disappointing to see the discussion deteriorating into the old class warfare, interestingly, by the conservatives.

Put simply we need to look at all options re education reform, not just US and UK, who perform less well than OZ. There are systems using different approaches to standardisation that are porforming better then us, let's not be too quick to dismiss them, as both sides of politics seem to be doing.

The coach of a football team is unlikely to follow the methods used by a team that is well below it on the table. It will look above. So let's do just that. Rather than the public private debate (yawn) lets look at what makes them tick and what gives them better outcomes for all kids.

Yvonne,

You posed the question as to why private schools enjoyed better outcomes than public schools even though they both employed the same curriculum.

I replied that from my perspective the reason was likely to be attitudes within the home environment.

I'll add here, that for society to dismiss parental/home influences - and influences in general beyond the school gates - as superfluous and of little weight, is one that will fail to fully round its next generation.

Organised a reunion of the Grade 8 graduates of 1960 two years ago. Of the 100 written replies received to my correspondence, only one did not exhibit perfect spelling, punctuation and grammar. What was different in those days?
There were classes of 50+ (no supply teachers in the event of absences - just slide the adjoining walls open), our teachers were enthusiastic (possibly driven by external exams), and there was a great balance of male and female teachers.

The bottom 10 percent of unruly students are the key to everything in the public schools. They're the students that make teachers life hell, and distract the whole class, in fact end up being the focus of the whole school, and influence via peer pressure and even fear.

The top 10 percent of high achieving students with high achieving parents set the tone in the private schools, and influence via peer pressure, and are the targets of aspiration, and fund top class facilities.

So the answer is how do we get the best overall results. Do you mix all the kids together and let the bottom 10% mix with the top 10%, and see who wins that peer battle for the hearts and minds of the follower children.

I know who my money's on.

So we have this system that encourages an elite insular system of silver spoons on one hand, and a rat race survival of the fittest system where the kids in it with decent parents survive well enough to enter the dumbed down universities.

Then it all starts again on an even footing at Uni. It has been shown that the kids that made it through the tougher half of the draw actually are more resourceful than the silver spoon lot at university. Though I suppose there may be more that got lost along the way.

In the end it's a better preparation for university to go to a public school, given the ineptitude of the lecturers these days, and the bureaucracy one will encounter, and the political bias one is used to dealing with.

All those years of honing essays (disingenuously of course) to be full of environmental black arm band socialist Utopian fantasies makes fitting into Uni a breeze.

Pity at the end of it we get graduates that have NFI. Still, keeps the kids off the streets and saves my tax money.

A fool and their money are easily parted, and i'll back my kids in the tough half of the draw, and save $40k a year to boot!

Houellie,

Einstein said something to the effect that the only thing that got in the way of his education was his schooling.

I know you used your school years to hone your style. It must have been a revelation to discover that you had more wit and intelligence than your teachers : )

(have you started that book yet?)

Is it just me or is this Donnelly guy a dead ringer for the loser teacher in Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

Poirot,

My English teacher couldn't spell, my maths teacher barely attended 3 of the 9 lessons per week for our 4 unit mathematics (In the absence of any teacher, we played cards or played touch footy), and I finished school with a high enough TER (Yes I am that old) to get into the course I wanted.(Well, wanted is too strong a word, in the abscence of any other ideas at barely 17 years of age, I was sheepled into a Science course, and who knew that you'd need a better score than that to be a glorified massuise.)

The very term TER was a wonderful example of the whole schooling system for mine. I await in anticipation for the Steak Holder Index my girls may have.

Imagine that! The SHI....

I only wish I had the dedication to home school like you do, as I fear my 'attitude' to the 'system' may either be taken out on my kids by the teachers who continually cop a serve from me, or my 'attitude' may rub off on my little cherubs.

I think it's like you say, I don't see school as 100% responsible for their education. I'm happy if their school just keeps them relatively safe, and does a basic job and I'm confident of being able to fill in the gaps or even pay a tutor with my $40k savings from not having them in the private system. I really cant believe people will pay that much after tax, I just don't see the benefit. I suppose because I see the exercise as a farce to begin with.

PS: I am penning my 50 shades of sexually repressed nice girls.

I will make trillions tapping into the educated woman's penchant for dreadfully written cringe-worthy tame and lame domination and submission porn and call it 'erotic literature'.

PPS: I am also deeply studying the work of the Bhagwan as Yabby suggested. Everyone needs a role model!

POWER corrupts and ABSOLUTE POWER corrupts absolutely.

Letting wealthy students set the standards in our schools will lead to an aristocracy that won't be brought down by chaff bag comments but rather by the guillotine.

The "educated" know-alls in the last several posts who IGNORE the clear and present dangers of dictatorship by immigration and baby bonuses don't even KNOW their French HISTORY. How educated is that.

I even saw a low class conversation by 'philosopher' Patrick Stokes out of Deakin Uni excoriating Free Speech thus: "It’s no part of a reporter’s job to give bulldust equal time with serious expertise"
Deakin University and the philosopher stoned? Where do they get these neanderthals.

In a true democracy, opinions avoid the inevitable erosion of democratic rights by wanna-be aristocrats and cashed up foreiegn criminals. Don't think that revolutions will not re-emerge in western nations as the GFC phenomenon rebites and the world is awash with phony printed US dollar bills sucking the life blood out of everything on this planet.

Australia, you will continue to be dumbed down via immigration and baby bonus dictatorships. The economies of scale that should come with JUST Immigration and poopulation expansion programs are NOT THERE!

We paid 3c/KWh for off peak electricity before Labor started treating us like sardines in a can. Now we are paying up to 20c/Kwh. With economies of scale it should be 3c or LESS. The dollar difference is going to making the rich into aristocrats who ware now actively targeting & attacking free speech.

If you believe that these people want your children to be better educated so they too can be rich then YOU deserve to be in the PEASANTRY they are cramming multiculturcorraling you into as we post.

You all know the worst OVERPOOPULATION offenders. They used to advertise on Jonesy.

Knowing who they are makes it easier to exact JUSTICE.

Hopefully before Paramatta Rd is turned into an open SEWER by a rebirthed Versailles Greiner Liberal dictatorship.

The silent MAJORITY must be catching on by now, no matter how badly they are being educated!

Shuffling sideways, trying not to make eye contact.

You make OUG seem coherent.

Can you tell me about the war or somfink codge?

Houellie,

I tend not to think in the prescribed fashion....and nor do you : )

I think you'll probably enjoy this essay by Robert Louis Stevenson.

http://www.library.wisc.edu/projects/glsdo/feraca/idlers.html

Guess which two practising upper class prat posters are havin' lunch at the Y?

There hasn't been much education here lately, only mere relaying of information. If today's teachers aren't able to actually teach then why do we have them ? Too many teachers are too young to understand what teaching is all about. I would not let them influence our youngsters until they've done a stint of National Service. But that's another sad story.
Teachers need to understand that their influence on young students can last for life be it a good experience or a bad one. It is irresponsible of our Education Departments to simply shove some young person who happened to pass multiple choice questions at Uni, into a class room & leave them there. Many of such young teachers have not progressed at all by way of either becoming responsible adults or adults at all.
What more evidence do these bureaucrats need before they come to their senses. The clock is ticking.