We need to do much better with our schools

A global study (done every three years), the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment assessed 600,000 15-year-olds from 79 countries, comparing maths, reading and science per. In Australia, 740 schools and more than 14,000 students were assessed.

The study found that Australian students were in long-term decline. Science scores plummeted to their lowest level ever. While many comparisons can be made, a couple of the most disturbing examples were that our students lag 3.5 years behind their Chinese counterparts in maths, and more than a year behind Singapore in reading.

Obviously, our schools are failing to give our kids the skills they need in these subjects as they do in other countries. This should not only be a concern in absolute terms here in Australia, but our kids now have to compete in a global market.

Australian student performance was on a par with countries like Sweden, New Zealand, the US, the UK, and Japan, but was lower than China, Singapore, Estonia, Canada, Finland, Ireland, Korea and Poland.

There should be no doubt that these results should be taken seriously, as something of a national wake-up call.

Politically, it certainly should not be taken as just another opportunity to score points on the other side, or to shift blame to the other side, or to kick the states, or the unions, as we have seen so many times in the past.

The federal government does not run any schools, although it does heavily fund education. The states differed in performance, with NSW, Victoria and Queensland on the OECD average, South Australia, Tasmania, and the Northern Territory behind, and the ACT (the best performer) and Western Australia both beat the average.

While the major political parties score points about which one is spending the most, there is no doubt that funding for schools has increased significantly over the period, and there has been a special focus, as a result of the Gonski Review, on correcting the misallocation of funding against disadvantaged schools.

This funding needs to be reassessed, relative to other countries. For example, Canada, a country similar to Australia in many ways, seems to outperform our schools on almost every measure, and they seem to have focused more on lifting the performance of disadvantaged students. Are there lessons here?

Two factors strike me as of particular importance. First, as a society, we do not give subjects like maths, science and reading the standing and prominence they deserve. They are more must-do subjects, on the way to doing something else.

Indeed, it's the reverse in the case of science, where climate scientists have been attacked for speaking out on what is one our most challenging global issues, and those who actually excel in all three of these fields are rarely recognised for their performances, unlike entertainers and sports stars.

Not only do we not give these subjects the focus they get in other countries, but I suspect our teachers are of poorer quality. There are many aspects to this. Our best high school graduates do not tend to go into teaching. While their starting salaries may be competitive, career paths are limited and incomes constrained.

I fear we also put too little weight on teacher quality, and are reluctant to accept the need for improved assessments of teacher performance, and for financial incentives, both positive and negative, to be pursued in relation to their performance. We certainly do not afford teachers the social status they deserve.

There are no easy answers on how to lift our national performance but it must be a priority right across society.

John Hewson is an ANU public policy professor, and a former Liberal Party leader.