Mike O’Connor: It’s national disgrace that schools are failing a generation of kids

Our kids aren’t stupid. They are the victims of a flawed system perpetuated by people who are part of the problem, writes Mike O’Connor.

A was for Apple, B was for Bat and C was for Cake. I can’t remember what D stood for or the rest of the alphabet but it was an awfully long time ago.

We used slates on which to write our ABCs, clutching our slate pencils and painstakingly forming our letters as we sat at our battered, timeworn desks in our little suburban classroom beneath the steely, unforgiving glare of the good Sisters of St Joseph.

We learnt to read and the pre-digital world opened before us through the pages of books.

Fast-forward to the digital age of infinite knowledge and an education system that consumes billions of dollars and turns out students who can’t read.

That’s right. They are virtually illiterate. A Learning Difficulties Australia conference has been told that about 57,000 teenagers who started in high school this year were semiliterate.

About 57,000 teenagers who started in high school this year are semiliterate, a Learning Difficulties Australia conference has been told. Picture: iStock

NAPLAN data for 2021 shows that 25 per cent of year 9 students and 20 per cent of year 7 students failed to meet the minimum standard for reading.

What chance do these kids have in life?

According to the Macquarie University Centre for Reading, 40 per cent of 15-year-olds cannot read at a functional level.

They are destined to cast on to the minimum-wage scrap heap, their futures predetermined by a society that has failed them.

If you cannot embrace the written word then your chances of gaining any knowledge of mathematics, science or history are virtually nil.

Your career options shrink, your life choices narrow and your self-esteem plummets.

It’s truly a national disgrace, but nobody seems to particularly care.

Society bangs on endlessly about inclusivity, which increasingly means excluding anyone who doesn’t agree with your point of view, but when it comes to our youth it blithely accepts that it’s fine for hundreds of thousands of young people to be denied the chance to achieve their potential.

NAPLAN data for 2021 shows that 25 per cent of year 9 students and 20 per cent of year 7 students failed to meet the minimum standard for reading. Picture: David Caird

These kids aren’t stupid. They are the victims of a flawed system perpetuated by people who are part of the problem.

The theory is that students should not be told what to learn and be made to learn it but that their education should be inquiry-based and self-driven.

Teachers who rail against it are marginalised.

The “woke” Left rules.

Governments bow to the ideological demands of the teaching unions and a syllabus that has demonstrably failed generations rolls on.

The answer to falling standards has been to pay someone handsomely to conduct a review that inevitably concludes the solution is to increase funding.

This fails to achieve anything but it makes all concerned, except the students who can’t read, feel better.

What matters is that something has been seen to be done.

Australian students have fallen from 11th place in maths in 2003 to 29th, from eight to 15th in science and from fourth to 16th in literacy, say the OECD Program for International Student Assessment ratings. Picture: iStock

This failure seeps through the system as standards continue to fall.

In 2021, after completing a three-year teaching degree, seven per cent or about 1500 graduates failed to pass basic numeracy and literacy tests.

This was twice the number of failures recorded six years previously and the figures for 2022 are predicted to be even more dire.

How can it be that after 12 years of high school education and a further three years at university, a person is incapable of performing simple calculations and displaying a basic grasp of grammar?

Want some more statistics? The Australian Education Research Organisation reports that most year 9 students are punctuating at a level expected of a year 3 student.

In the OECD Program for International Student Assessment ratings, which compares the proficiency of 15-year-olds from 76 industrialised nations, Australian students have fallen from 11th place in maths in 2003 to 29th, from eight to 15th in science and from fourth to 16th in literacy.

Some private schools have finally conceded that drastic action is needed and have turned back to the unfashionable methods of teaching students to read.

What is plain is that rather than things getting better, they are getting worse. Some private schools have finally conceded that drastic action is needed and have turned back to the unfashionable methods of teaching students to read, the same ones used by the good Sisters of St Joseph all those years ago.

I lasted 18 months as a night student at university while working full time before tossing it in and am largely self-taught.

I’ve read and read and cannot imagine life without reading yet this is the sentence we pass on our young people as we feed them into a system that is destroying their chance of living a fulfilling life before they even get started.

They deserve a lot better.