THE woeful results of Australian primary students in an international reading test are a disgrace. Our Year 4 students are ranked the lowest in reading skills of all the English-speaking countries. One quarter of our students even failed to meet the minimum standard for their age group, despite being among the relatively most advantaged in terms of reading resources, home environment and the emphasis on early grades on reading skills. In science and maths, our students are similarly languishing, at 25th and 18th place, respectively.

But it is not the fault of the students that they have performed poorly. Nor is it entirely the fault of their teachers. The fault lies with the progressive education ideology that has infected teacher training establishments and education departments in every state for 40 years.

Faced with more proof that their methods haven't worked, education academics last week flocked on to the universities' website, The Conversation, to declare that the PIRLS test is suspect, the results meaningless, and all that is needed is more taxpayer money. That was the blindingly brilliant recommendation of the Gonski review, to pour $5 billion extra into schools for smaller class sizes and more specialist teachers. In other words, do more of the same that hasn't worked.

Madness is doing the same thing and expecting different results. Spending an additional $5bn a year to do more of the same, is typical Labor strategy.

Shadow Minister,

So the answer should be smaller classes according to the review. Dear me, how did so many of us reach University standard when we had classes of 30 or more throughout our school lives?

Of course, we also had school inspectors. Woe betide anyone who was even late for school, and truants were also punished. Parents had to provide a letter to explain a child's absence, even for one day.

As for literacy, I once corrected my son's teacher's spelling when I read her mispelled report. Parents have the greatest responsibility for early education. Television and computer games are no substitute for books, and parental efforts to encourage children to use them. Any child can be encouraged to look for correct spelling and meaning of words in a dictionary.

Maybe a review of literacy should be undertaken by parents rather than academics. To waste our money paying them to make such ridiculous proposals is unforgivable. Even more unforgivable is the projected cost of $5 billion. This government seems hell bent on finding ever more ways to spend taxpayer's money, and this is but one amongst many of their insane proposals to increase our already considerable financial burdens. What more dubious ways can they possibly find to spend our money, then ask for our votes to help them continue their shambolic policies?

You must be a bit of a kid worldwatcher, if you only had 30 in your class. When I started, just after the war we had at least 35, but 40 to 45 was more common in Townsville.

Right from the start we were given 10 words to learn to spell & understand each night, & copped the stick if we hadn't done the work.

Yes we had inspectors, & my first lady, an English teacher was terrified of them. Of course it was the teachers they were inspecting, not the kids. Their place on the promotions ladder, & their chance of getting the area they wanted all depended on the inspectors assessment.

The poor teachers & those who could not enforce discipline were quickly weeded out & dispatched to other careers. Today those teachers stay in the job, destroying many kids education, & life chances.

Much of the problem is with incompetent teachers, but that is often head offices fault. In math & science, in country areas particularly, they often supply teachers unqualified for the job, because they don't have suitable teachers, who will go to these places.

In our area we had a biology teacher detailed to teach senior math C. Privately he admitted he could not even do the work, let alone teach it, & used a couple of very bright kids, & a couple, like my daughter, who were getting competent outside coaching, to help muddle through.

What we need is a lot more external tests, & regular inspection of teachers, so we can weed out the incompetent teachers, & give our kids a chance, definitely not more money

Hasbeen,

I did say 30 or more. I remember 30 as the minimum number, but there were plenty of empty seats to accomodate more children when they returned from the country where they'd been sent because our region was heavily bombed when I was at school. After hostilities ended, the numbers in class increased when children returned to the cities.

Agree with you - more money is not the answer, though it may have pleased JG to hear of yet another way to spend more of our money on yet another harebrained scheme dreamed up by this present team they cobbled together. Mere brains are no substitute for innovative and creative thinking in place of commonsense solution without spending huge sums.
As my father often told me "there is no such word as can't". So yes, they can think of ways to improve our children's literacy, and it doesn't neccessarily mean money must be spent to do it. All that is needed is some lateral thinking within the parameters of existing available education funds.

SM, I have been on the band wagon regarding the woeful number of university students that NOW do subjects that require higher math, the economic important subjects. More uni students were enrolled into these subjects in 1970 than there are now, that is frightening given our population growth over the past 40 years.

My bride is an educator and quite some years ago she banned me from going to her work functions because I told the educators that they are nothing more than the tools employed by the bureaucrats to dumb down a generation of Australian children. They think I am an educational heretic because I want the rote system reintroduced as the primary tool used to give infants and primary students at least the rudiments of reading writing and arithmetic.

Sonofgloin,

Hmmm, still remember my times tables, singing the alphabet, and even remember latin, german and french verbs and the theory of pythagorus - all learned by rote. Drummed into my skull, and never forgotten.Even the so called dead latin language has helped me understand other languages in my travels. Have to confess I can't remember much of the greek though past the first few letteers of the alphabet.

So, couldn't have been such a bad system, could it? Often the old ways stand the test of time, and shouldn't necessarily be discarded until new ones have proved to work at least equally as well, if not better.