Close to 5 per cent of Australian International Baccalaureate graduates received a perfect score last year,compared with 0.09 per cent of VCE graduates.
Adrian Piccoli says federal Education Minister Stuart Robert is wrong to claim ‘dud’ teachers at public schools are the key reason for declining academic performance.
Stuart Robert said private schools did not have the teacher quality issue,prompting the education union to accuse him of failing to prioritise public education.
Adopting the practices of high-performing nations on PISA will not,on its own,improve Australia’s educational performance.
The achievements of Australian students have declined more consistently and steeply than in any other country,barring fad-friendly Finland. We must reverse this trend.
Australia has lifted its performance in a global mathematics and science test but disadvantaged,rural and Indigenous students still lag behind other students.
Data shows most senior school students believed they usually manage through difficulty"one way or another",and can find their way out of a hard situation.
Education Minister Sarah Mitchell has said she will"keep pushing"for changes to NAPLAN including making the tests earlier in the year,spreading them over multiple weeks and getting results back much faster.
Gladys Berejiklian is looking for an answer to the bad results in the PISA schools survey but she should not scapegoat teachers.
The federal Education Minister is calling for a rollout of'learning progressions',saying the technique is key to boosting students'results.
International comparisons should help us reflect on the ultimate purpose of education,not be exploited by those who want to beat statistics into swords.