Botton of the class for Aussies students

More dollars but less sense training our teachers and kids

AUSSIE high school students have fallen up to two years behind Asian students in reading, maths and science.

Poor teacher training is blamed for the staggering divide.

"If a kid (in Australia) is that far behind (in a classroom) we would consider him disadvantaged. They would likely be put into the remedial class," said researcher Dr Ben Jensen, director of the school education program at the Melbourne-based think tank the Grattan Institute.

Its report, Catching up: Learning from the best school systems in East Asia, reveals Australian high school students are more than two years behind Shanghai students in maths and 15 months behind in science.

We trail Shanghai students by 13 months in reading and are also significantly behind Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore in key learning areas.

Researchers say that a huge increase in education spending - 44 per cent in the past decade - has been wasted because it failed to invest in making our teachers better.

Nor did universities properly train new teachers for the pressures of the classroom. "Being nearly two years behind (Shanghai) is staggering. It really is a long way," Dr Jensen said.

He said individual teachers were not to blame, because their training was not up to scratch. The answer lay not in hiring more teachers, but in more effective ways of helping students learn.

"Other Asian countries are constantly working out ways of how kids can be better taught. We don't," he said. "The main difference is (teachers overseas) are trained as researchers and they are continually trying new things with children's learning. If it has been successful, they keep it."

Dr Jensen said though spending in education had drastically improved, it was being diverted to new buildings and schools.

"We are spending a lot of money ... but we are spending in the wrong places. We should be spending it on how to better improve our students' learning," he said.

"The OECD and the World Bank are very clear that the most important economic reform is improving student performance."

US and UK students fare even worse than our own, with both nearly three years behind Shanghai students in maths.

heraldsun.com.au 18 Feb 2012

Another indication that educating the children of the masses is NOT a government priority and never will be.

Education is still kept in the hands of the ruling elite, whereas blue collar education and a focus on sport is giver to the children of the masses.

With a lack of education, the young minds can be easily steered in the direction that is beneficial to the powers at large.