What needs to be done about Australian students falling behind the rest of the world

Australian students are falling behind the rest of the world academically and there are growing calls to strip back the syllabus and go back to basics.

Businessman David Gonski’s review of the education system last month noted that students are often doing subjects that are “not necessary useful to them”. The review goes some way to addressing concerns, but some don’t think it goes far enough.

Dr Jennifer Buckingham from the Centre for Independent Studies believes Gonski 2.0 won't solve any short term slippage in our academic standards.

“These are really big ideas for the most part that will take five years before they get to schools and five years before we get results.” Dr Buckingham said.

“It will significantly increase the workload of teachers and it's not at all clear how that's going to be accommodated.”

In just 15 years Australia’s academic world ranking has slipped from 4th to 16th in Reading, from 7th to 25th in Mathematics and from 4th to 14th in Science.

Former teacher Peter Crawford says we need to go back to “hard matter of fact learning.”

He was an English teacher in public high schools for 2 decades and has witnessed the demise of the English syllabus.

“They’re getting rid of the simple idea of teaching novels, poetry and drama and replacing it with all sorts of topics such as pulp fiction, print media or animation so kids are sitting there watching not Donald Duck but the modern cartoons for months on end.”

Dr Iain Hay, Director of Professional Learning and Engagement at Macquarie University says it’s a bit troublesome to simply say let’s go back to basics.

He focuses on “learning together as teams and working on problems jointly.”

“We know that there are a set of skills for the future for the jobs that don't exist at this time.” Dr Hay said.

Marc Reicher, Principal of Mater Maria Catholic College in Sydney has seen the syllabus change over his quarter of a century in education.

“The curriculum is crowded but we are educating the whole person to go out in the world.” Mr Reicher said.

That also rings true with the NSW Education Minister Rob Stokes.

“It's timely to look at ways we can simplify and clarify the curriculum.” Mr Stokes said.

Not only that but he’s looking at dumping NAPLAN.

He says there’s better ways of doing assessment which is more about testing the teaching than teaching to the test which is the trap that we’ve fallen into currently with NAPLAN.