Low performing students need to get back to learning basics in the classroom | Caleb Bond

With nearly half of schoolchildren now failing to meet national standards for reading and maths, Caleb Bond believes it’s time for students to get back to basics.

‘Mask the ignorance’: Sky News host slams Melbourne’s student-led pro-Palestine protest

Is it any wonder our school results are in the toilet when students’ heads are being filled with the guff and activism that has entered the classroom?

Nearly half of schoolchildren are now failing to meet national standards for reading and maths, according to the latest Programme for International Student Assessment results.

The average year 10 student is now a year behind their counterparts 20 years ago – and South Australia had the worst decline in results.

This is despite the curriculum being redrawn umpteen times and seemingly endless sums of money being thrown at education.

The system is clearly broken. When you chuck more money at a broken system, you just get an even-more expensive broken system.

Despite what teaching unions have been saying for decades, funding is not the problem. It’s how and what children are learning in the classroom and at home.

We have to get back to basics.

In SA, 29 per cent of students were found to be “low performers” in maths and 21 per cent in literacy.

A low performer does not have the skills to effectively participate in society and the workplace.

They are staggering numbers. A fifth of students don’t have the most basic skills in reading and writing – and nearly a third in maths.

If schools are not preparing children for life and the workplace, then what is their purpose?

The Left’s long march through the institutions has been so successful that children are leaving school not as well-equipped workers but as activists.

Look at the scenes across the country in recent weeks of school kidswalking out of the classroom and marching through capital cities in support of Palestinian terror group Hamas. In Melbourne they shouted “Allahu akbar”. Many, when questioned, had little idea of the reality of what goes on in Palestine.

This was aided and abetted by teachers who use their influence to push a political agenda.

Those kids should have been in the classroom learning.

The Australian Education Union and the NSW Teachers’ Federation have encouraged members to wear the keffiyeh – a scarf that is a symbol of Palestinian resistance, most notably worn by Yasser Arafat – to work and even invite Palestinian activists to address students.

You’d be forgiven for thinking the top priority here was to indoctrinate students rather than lift their academic results.

And it works. A Western Sydney University study earlier this year discovered students now find Anzac history “deadly boring” and “irrelevant” and two-thirds do not connect with important Australian historical events such as Federation and the spirit of the Anzacs.

None of this is by accident.

If you get them young, you might have them for life.

It suits the socialist agenda, but it doesn’t improve the country.

The curriculum – the entire education system – needs to be blown up and started again.