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Focus on basic skills blamed for decline in reading standards
Anna Patty EDUCATION EDITOR
September 21, 2010 - 3:00AM
THE reading abilities of Australian 15-year-olds have declined significantly in international comparisons, partly because schools are focused on basic skills and not on more sophisticated learning for brighter students, says the head of the national curriculum authority, Barry McGaw.
Professor McGaw, the chairman of the Curriculum and Assessment Authority, has analysed Australia's decline in reading performance in comparison with other developed countries. It appeared this was linked to a fall in the standards of top-performing students.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, for which Professor McGaw previously worked as director for education, ranked Australia in tied second place with eight other countries in 2000. Australia's position slipped to sixth place in 2006, with its mean performance dropping from 528 to 513 points.
Describing this fall as statistically significant, Professor McGaw said it was mostly a result of a decline in student performance at the highest level.
''The reasons for this are not immediately evident from the data, but it [is] at least clear that it is due to schools focusing more on basic achievement levels and not so much on the development of sophisticated reading of complex text.''
Professor McGaw said countries such as Finland and South Korea, which have comprehensive schooling systems, had far outperformed Germany, which had a less equitable schooling system and had fallen sharply in international rankings.
In Germany, like Australia, social background was more closely linked to educational achievement than in the OECD as a whole. Socially disadvantaged students do much worse in Australia and Germany than in other countries.
''Their results are inequitable in the sense that differences among students in their literacy levels reflect to a marked extent differences in their social background,'' Professor McGaw said.
''The gap in educational achievement between similarly socially disadvantaged students in Germany and Finland represents about three years of schooling. Similarly disadvantaged students in Australia fall about halfway between, about one and a half [years] behind their counterparts in Finland.''
Professor McGaw said that in Germany students from the age of 11 were separated into vocational and academic schools of various types on the basis of the ''educational future judged to be most appropriate for them''.
''Students from socially disadvantaged backgrounds generally end up in low-status vocational school and achieve poor educational results. Students from socially advantaged backgrounds are directed into high-status academic schools where they achieve high-quality results.
''The schooling system largely reproduces the existing social arrangements, conferring privilege where it already exists and denying it where it does not.''
Professor McGaw said Australia should aspire to match top-performing and high-equity countries such as Finland, South Korea, Japan and Canada.
The president of the Australian Education Union, Angelo Gavrielatos, said the country's education policy was heading in the same direction as that of Germany.
''This analysis by Professor McGaw shows that Australian education policy is on a trajectory which will not deliver equity and excellence,'' he said.
This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/national/e ... 20100920-15ju1.html |
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奶黄菠萝派 (2006-12-3) poloand 
发表于 2010-9-21 11:44
