Time really to stop fixating on academic achievement as an end in itself, but instead concentrate on the "need" for the academic achievement.

The school system is a failure when its primary aim is to entertain students off into adulthood, as the alternative to an industrious working life at a much younger age, in jobs which are increasingly taken-up by overseas tourists on special working visas.

Most children should be encouraged to leave school...not stay on unwillingly and disrupt the lives and endeavor of those who actually wish to be educated!
An alternative to education for the majority of adult school "internees", is the problem with education; it should never be a child minding service!

While I agree with much of what the author has to say, teachers and schools represent only a part of the solution. What happens in schools and school systems will work most effectively if they are supported by parents and families.

Many countries, including Australia, have spent vast sums trying to improve schooling outcomes by transforming school structures, curriculum and assessment and teacher training, etc. Resulting improvements have mostly been small in comparison to the level of investment.

Yet Australia is making very little investment in something that is known to make a significant difference: parents actively engaging with their children’s education from birth onwards; and there being a real understanding of the role that parents and families can play in improving learning outcomes. High expectations and the belief that every child can learn and improve are also key.

Sacker et al (2002)found that at age seven, 5 per cent of a student's achievement is determined within school while 29 per cent is determined by their parents. This finding is consistent with many other research studies.

So where are the policies, program priorities and investment that focus on engaging parents in their children's school experience in meaningful ways that go beyond just participating in what happens at school? Where are the policies and resources that build on the research which clearly shows parents can help their children succeed in school, particularly in the early years in disadvantaged communities? Where are the policies and investment that recognise the importance of parents' roles as first and continuing educators of their children?

Those issues will need to be seriously addressed if we are really going to improve outcomes for all students.

strong families bring strong outcomes. Secularist want to redefine and pervert the successful model and then bang on about needing more resources to fix their mess.

Why do people make such a meal of things. Instead of looking for lessons from other countries, what we need to do is look at what worked, when we were a top educational nation, & go back to that.

Get rid of all the trendy garbage, & go back to hard book closed exams, which really tell you what the kid has learnt & knows.

Go back to marks out of a hundred, & places in the class/school year results. Perhaps it takes a bit of lack of self esteem to get kids to work, or perhaps to get parents involved. Nothing like seeing their kid at the bottom of the class to get parents interested.

Lets face it, if they don't know their kid is failing, & they can't in todays system of protecting deadbeat teachers, with motherhood statements in school reports, they are unlikely to do anything constructive.

Lets see school inspectors assessing teachers in the classroom, & rating them on the public assessable promotions list of old. Even more important, lets see some utterly useless teachers sacked.

And lets stop mucking with curriculum. With todays mobile society kids need to be able to move schools intra & inter state, without an entire years schooling being missed or mucked up. A high percentage of the important teachers, math & science have enough trouble just managing the subject matter, let alone changing it.

Perhaps we need to double the pay for teachers of the hard stuff, math, physics etc., & halve it for tiddlywinks, media studies & performing arts etc. Even better, get rid of these child minding pretend subjects & get the kids out to work.

In my country high school of 360 students, only 12 of us did 5Th year, & half of them then went to teachers college. That's right half of the academically top kids of a whole year became teachers, & this was common. How many top kids become teachers today?

Yes Hasbeen; You've got it in a nutshell! My point exactly. The vast majority of children are not academically inclined; a point highlighted in your post.

Now though, since the new age FT agreements, and Globilisation generally have decimated Australian industry, as it marched off to Asia; how TF do we accommodate those majority of non-academic students that schools now over-educate to the point of ruination?

So my point is simple; less student numbers, less investment in wasted education!

This is what came out of that survey:
1. Finland does significantly better than Australia yet pay for teachers is about 30k a year , half the pay for the average Australian teacher. There is also a very low teacher drop out rate there and high demand for teaching positions. Teachers are highly educated there too.
2. Gillards enormous expenditure made no difference here.

Its not money that is the problem its student motivation and the ability of teachers to appropriately focus their charges in the right direction which is lacking. In Australia the dominant youth culture is about physical attractiveness and partying together with adoration of negative role models. In addition issues such as social engineering of students and teacher pay equity seems to be the major focus of the system rather than educational process