News of Australian students’ falling performance in international testing is dominating the news cycle today — with particular attention given to how we’re faring in relation to China.
The Australian’s front page highlighted the fact that Australian students are three-and-a-half years behind Chinese students (though didn’t mention that this was only in mathematics), while its page six article reinforced the idea with the headline “Aussie kids years behind China peers”.
Sunrise paired an interview with Education Minister Dan Tehan with graphics pitting Australia’s results against China’s, like rivals in a WWE wrestling match.
Of course, it’s worth noting that while China’s four main provinces (Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Guangdong) performed the highest in the world across Maths, Reading, and Science, Singapore did better when you factor in Macau and Hong Kong — something News Corp’s papers neglected to mention.
Perhaps that is why The Sydney Morning Herald‘s national education editor Jordan Baker led with a comparison between Australian students and “their counterparts in top-performing Singapore”. She also focused on other metrics, such as how the our “results in maths have declined further than any country but Finland”.
Outside Sydney, the News Corp papers, including the NT News, Melbourne’s Herald Sun and Brisbane’s Courier-Mail, gave greater attention to their local results within the national context.
The NT News’ page 13 story responded to the territory’s poor results — it received the worst overall scores in Australia — by pointing out that its performance in reading and science, and decline in maths, was on par with that of Tasmania.
The Herald Sun was far less forgiving of its state results, leading with the fact that “Victorian students’ math skills are half-a-year behind the levels of 15 years ago”.
How do you even begin to compare reading between countries with difficult historical spelling systems as in English and Thai, straightforward spelling as in Indonesian/Malay and some European languages and ideographic writing such as Chinese and Japanese?
So the apparent economic and industry strategy for Australia has been working has it not? – our industry policy and public subsidies are channeling public resources under a socialist model such as tax concessions and government grants and wage subsidies into low wage standard work in water intensive irrigation such as fruit picking and coal mining industries including the deplorably low welfare standard live animal export industry for low value added commodity exports , while making higher education unattractive as a career pathway being based on a market model of achieving a profit from mass educating Chinese students with low cost academics. Heavy taxpayer input into tradies vehicles via fringe benefit and small business tax deductions also g ives kids every incentive to aim to be a sole trader sparkie driving a Ute and working for cash with no need for maths rather than a university educated electronics engineer who has capacity to value add to Australias future high tech export business. It’s how the financial and economic maths adds up isn’t it?
All very effective really. If joining the global race to the bottom in wage, animal and human welfare standards is the vision and the only future available to Australia
The ‘general’ media coverage on the education sector is so boring and shallow, especially articles by the likes of Jordan Baker. As if comparing results of PISA actually means anything. That is similar to looking at a countries GDP and only measuring success in that way (which is generally what we do). Chinese kids spend way too much time studying, have super high pressure to achieve, and super high mental health problems related to this. Not an education system to look up to at all. Scoring high on a test also doesn’t necessarily translate into actually being able to apply those skills well in work contexts and problem-solving. In saying that, there is much needed overhaul of how Australia does things in education etc. But comparing our young people to Chinese young people and saying there is something wrong purely because of a test score does nothing except shame out our young people and educators. Getting higher PISA scores are a main concern for the govt. because our education industry is competing with other countries for a share of the Chinese market, rather than actual concern for our youth anyway. Business as usual for them.
Waddyer mean, “only in mathematics”? It is precisely because we are lazy with our simple arithmetic that we fail to choose the most profitable superannuation, the cheapest housing and the right number of kids at the right time of life. Here on Crikey, commenters routinely fail to check the facts in an article by looking up its numbers, do a little crunching, and then calling out an inaccuracy, distortion or lie. Watching the emerging evidence of the worsening climatic crisis just begs us to watch the numbers, draw the graphs, and take our individual stands on the solutions. Crucially the solutions (100% RE etc) too, require us to crunch the numbers. Yet when we scan the comments pages, we see they are bereft of numbers as if the commenters are constitutionally anti-school.
Just out of interest, Justine, is there an in-house Naivety Award at Crikey because although its only 4 Dec I suggest that your article will deserve the award for the month; or at least the week.
About 30 years ago most universities that offered a B.Ed or a Grad Dip Ed had a course with a name such as Comparative Education or similar. The point of such a course was to compare country X with Australia and while doing that compare countries Y and Z with one-another. Last time I looked (and that was some time ago) only Newcastle offered such a course. The embarrassment had become too great.
Know anyone who has taught high-end STEM in China Justine? Well if you don’t have anyone to hand : pick me! I was there for just short of a decade. A good deal of middle school 11-15 (10-14 for some places) is rote but it is effective. Having obtained a body of FACT for the last four or five years the students at somewhere around age 15-16 have a background to express themselves which exceeds ANYTHING that I have witnessed in Australia.
One the one hand individual merit reflects upon the family in Asia so to this end school students take an interest. On the other hand one seldom hears remarks to the effect of “I don’t give a damn about school – I’ll get a job in the mines at 100k a year” which are a near mantra for Yr10/11 in Australia. To be fair the casinos did offer something of the sort to students with movie-star looks until Xi (2012) rubbed out large scale gambling but even then it was not paraded as an option.
For the purpose of causing everyone to feel better there is a range of ability in Asia and in the PRC as well but in general the ATTITUDE of the students is very different to that with exists in Australia. THAT is the point and hence the grading to which you allure.
Lastly, for now, see if you can obtain “observer status” when a school in the PRC is having a ‘Parent’s DAY’. Then compare a ‘Parent’s Evening’ for an Australian school. I’ve witnessed parents (who bother to) turn up
for the latter intoxicated – and some, no less obviously, stoned.
As an aside, its interesting to note the correlations (very sad) between NOT insisting on homework (mandatory in the PRC and Asia generally) and retention or aptitude. The Finish education system (and its special schools) are a topic in itself Justine.
Not funding or anything as idiotic as Gonski; merely ATTITUDE Justine! THAT would make a difference!