Making an education revolution happen

We heard recently of a new report (PDF 4.5MB) on reading levels. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) runs a Program for International Student Assessment or PISA. This is a study done every three years on the knowledge and skills of 400,000 15-year-old students in 57 countries.

Students in some countries have done stunningly well. Koreans have improved so spectacularly they have improved, on average, by 31 score points - almost the equivalent of one school year. Finland’s students did next best, while students in Hong Kong, Poland and Chile have made significant gains.

Australian students have not done as well. Nor are they showing great improvement. Some 13 per cent of our children are reading poorly. They are thus at risk of poor educational achievement. This in turn makes likely a whole range of poor life outcomes, including those connected to health. Children who can’t read well can’t understand the complex messages sent out about what to eat and drink. Or the equally complex messages about how to exercise sensibly.

Of all the subjects surveyed, reading is the subject with the largest sex (gender) differences. Boys are much more at risk than girls. If they are working-class boys, they do worse again. And Indigenous boys are probably worst of all.

The PISA study is significant. This is no half-baked, impressionistic study. It’s done by well-reputed experts looking at a whole range of factors from socio-economic data to self-belief and attitudes to learning. These have great value in telling us how well kids will adjust to adulthood, work and life in total. PISA also examines scientific and mathematical skills and attitudes.

However, in this article I will concentrate on reading. First, because of my own understanding and experience. And second, because the ability to understand is such a fundamental platform on which to build other understandings, such as foreign languages, historical and environmental education.

A 15-year-old who can only copy information from Wikipedia will likely be extremely limited in what he can achieve in life. For this reason PISA literacy tests not just simple comprehension, but the ability to analyse information, interpret material and solve problems using basic data. And it is precisely at these higher levels that some 13 per cent of Australian students have been found wanting.

Australia now has a Rudd Government. Rudd has often spoken of an educational revolution. It will happen - I hope - through Julia Gillard, Minister for Education and Industrial Relations. But how would this be achieved? Let’s look at some key target areas.

Comparative data

PISA says that comparative data is essential. Some schools publish data on students’ achievement. Their children achieve significantly better than the rest. It follows that parents should know how schools perform compared with other schools. And how well their child performs against other children. This is not easy, as the question is always not just what they achieve but what value has been added to that success by the school.

The Rudd Government has published policies saying it will test children in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 and publish the results. I’m not quite sure how this would be done, as we have had a lot or argument lately about what parents should be told in school reports, with teacher unions opposing calls for more candid reporting on progress, and resisting comparisons among schools.

More literate teachers?

Teacher education is also discussed in PISA, with the recommendation that teachers be properly qualified. When we turn to Labor policy (as presented online) teacher education is discussed a great deal. Rudd has promised to assess students entering teacher education and look hard at their literacy and spelling. He wants teachers to be much more skilled in spelling (not just using a spell-check). He wants teachers to be able to write proper sentences and use a comma and apostrophe correctly.

I think this would be a laudable move. But as a university academic I mark many theses. And it is very common for masters and even doctoral thesis applicants to have difficulty with all of the tasks Labor wants emphasised. Because I often mark theses on boys’ education, I am no longer surprised by people who cannot write boys’ education without making a mistake. Many of these applicants are practising teachers.

Since retiring from my 37-year stint in teacher education, I have begun teaching foreign students English. These students are from countries like South Korea, China, Brazil and Indonesia. Of course there are various levels from what we term absolute beginners to those doing university preparation. Not only are most of them more skilled than my former teacher education students in grammar, knowing the names of tenses and writing in various modes from a letter to a script. But they want to learn. They welcome correction and ask for guidance. As a rule, teacher education students do not.

The foreign students give me attention and respect - far more than most students in teacher education. And it has become too hard to fail university students these days. It just makes more work, and many of them pass anyway - through appeals, complaints, or intervention by various parties - without ever understanding the work.

Teacher education has had about 20 enquiries in recent years but we continue to drift downwards. Every year we ask less of students. Wholesale subjects have been abandoned: it is some 12 years since all my primary education students stopped doing a course in basic Australian history. Oh, we’re only going to be primary students … Is this relevant to Kindergarten? Do we need to know this?

Experienced teacher educators swear that they used to be in lectures and workshops five days a week, 9 until 5. These days students do most of their classes on two or three days, and then work at Maccas or the shoe shop for up to 20 hours. And they still complain of overwork! Better teacher education - a great idea. I wish the Rudd Government luck on this one.

Poor grammar in the media

The decline in literacy is not limited to the educational establishment. I have wearied of sending messages to the media about grammatical errors, even in the respectable Sydney Morning Herald. Of course we can’t expect anyone to correct the police spokesmen on TV, with their endearing use of tense: “I’ve seen him come in and he’s had a gun in his hand …” when the correct tense is simple past “I saw …”.

SBS might imagine it is above reproach, but there are many names badly pronounced (often Australian ones). There are frequent solecisms and redundancies - "innocent victims", "a young girl", "new initiatives" and so on, on both SBS and commercial TV (and there’s not much difference, these days). Nor is the ABC much better.

Our beloved local Member, Malcolm Turnbull was dubious, ABC news told us one night. I think they meant doubtful. When ABC Online reported on PISA it said that student’s reading levels were slipping. Perhaps this was an unintended irony?

The point is that we have lost a lot of ground in grammar. Grammar faded from most schools in the 1970s and it has never regained that ground. So who shall teach the teachers? Once again, I think the Rudd Government’s motives are laudable. But I worry about how much can be achieved. Without massive effort and determination, we won’t stem the tide of people who don’t know proper grammar, pick up the sayings of ignorant Americans and imitate speech patterns from the media.

So where do we turn?

In all this gloom, how can we hope for better reading among Australian kids? In my view, we ought to move in these directions.

Parents
We can’t give up on parents. Schools have children for a few hours a week, about 40 weeks a year. Parents are the primary educators. Much needs to done to help mothers, and rightly so. But in my experience fathers need more encouragement. They need confidence and practice to raise children well. Father education needs to happen where dads are - in workplaces, pubs, around sport. Rudd could pick up a tip from Mark Latham about giving parents more help to raise children.

Childcare
The Rudd Government has properly aimed at improving standards in childcare. No other area is so important for laying down patterns of language. Yet the costs are so daunting and disproportionate. The Jesuits were right: get kids early and get them doing the right things. That means eating well, exercising sensibly and reading. Maybe here Ms Gillard can take action to get better child care happening.

Here the ABC can take a bow: Play School is far underestimated. Many a busy parent has put little Johnny or Jenny in front of the TV and found that the child picks up useful, practical English well presented in a no-nonsense way that children love.

Libraries
Libraries are always under-funded for the work we expect them to do. School libraries ought to be really exciting places that children visit to see what they are doing next. Occasionally I will see a school library with a go-ahead librarian, heaps of displays and children everywhere. More often they are dead, colourless and nearly deserted.

Teachers
We have to find ways of getting better people into teaching, and keeping them there. Teacher pay is just too poor to attract the best students. I applaud the plan by Rudd’s Labor Government to test teacher entrants to teaching. In my view, a grammar test of any difficulty would fail maybe a third of the students I have met.

And then what do we do with them? Are teacher education staff qualified to teach them grammar? Such staff have many demands on their time: attending meetings, obeying more decrees from university “pooh-bahs”, teaching, marking and so on. Do they have the time to teach yet another nuisance group of failed students who bitterly resent being failed and will complain venomously about the evil people who failed them?

Media
Any government has to work with the media to effect change. Yet in my experience, good programs are pushed out by drivel. And journalists consistently aim at the lowest common denominator. Reporting of educational issues is appalling in most media, especially on television. How often have I been able to predict that the “current affairs” shows will tart up a serious issue with nonsense and people who are lined up, hopefully to attack each other in the name of civilised debate.

Public television and radio could do much in this regard. We need programs teaching people basic English, as well as Spanish and Mandarin. Here, the federal Government could do much useful work, and use public media to educate us all.

PISA has given us food for thought. If the Rudd Government wants an education revolution, that is good news. I worry about how it will happen, given the inertia in the system. Ms Gillard must know the Federal Government doesn’t employ one teacher. It doesn’t run one school. To make the revolution happen, she will need the support of the States, the teacher unions, academics, parents, even the media. I sincerely hope she succeeds.