Sue Thomson, Australian Council for Educational Research
Australian students, on average, reported a poorer sense of belonging at school than the OECD average. But issues with sense of belonging aren’t distributed evenly across the population.
Financial literacy is non-intuitive to the human brain and fundamental to survival today. We should follow British Columbia’s example and make financial literacy mandatory in every grade - across the country.
Standardised tests restrict how well students with disability can do, which reinforces the idea that there are things they can’t do that children without disability can.
NAPLAN is good at measuring some aspects of education, including knowledge difference between demographics, but has not produced a positive effect on student learning outcomes.
The latest PISA report shows Indonesian girls outperforming boys in all subjects. But, overall, Indonesian students are low performers among students of PISA-participating countries.
The role of private tuition plays a part in the overall success of students in Singapore, with around 80% of primary-school children having at least three hours of private tuition a week.
Politicians need to stop meddling with education policy and invest in teachers if Australia’s science, mathematics and reading standards are to improve.
Rather than leaping to conclusions about a failing education system, we need to look at what the data tells us about student performance at a state level to help us make more informed decisions.