Aussie students ‘stagnating’: More cash splashed on education but nothing to show for it

A scathing report has found kids are missing more school, while academic outcomes remain “stagnant” despite billions being spent.

Almost one third of Australian kids do not show up to school regularly in a worrying trend identified by the latest Productivity Commission report on education which has found despite $319 billion spent over the past four years, academic results have stagnated.

The scathing report examined the extent to which policy initiatives under the National School Reform Agreement made in 2018 by state and federal education ministers had progressed and were helping student outcomes four years after it was made.

The report said “despite the large increase in public funding since 2018, student outcomes have stagnated”.

It highlighted that in NAPLAN tests there were 80,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, 126,500 students in outer regional areas and 95,000 students of parents with low educational attainment.

But only 36,000 students in one of those groups did not meet the minimum standards in literacy and numeracy while there were 86,500 students who were also failing NAPLAN.

Results are stagnating, the latest Productivity Commission report has found.

“While students from priority equity cohorts are disproportionately represented among students who have fallen behind national minimum standards, most underperforming students do not belong to these cohorts,” the report said.

Meanwhile target groups who were falling behind were not fairing any better as they progressed through school.

“Indeed, rather than narrowing, the gap in learning (expressed as the time it would take for students from priority equity cohorts to catch-up) widens as students progress through their schooling,” it said.

Additionally, it said school attendance across the board was terrible.

“In a continuation of a pre-COVID-19 trend, the proportion of students attending school for at least 90 per cent of the time nationally decreased from 78 per cent to 71 per cent between 2015 to 2021,” it said.

That equates to 29 per cent of students are not coming to school regularly.

Nearly one third of all kids don’t turn up to class.

The report took aim at federal and state governments for not acting since the last national reform agreement was reached to implement programs like the Online Formative Assessment Initiative.

“Progress on some of the initiatives that would make the most difference has been disappointing,” it said.

The report also highlighted that Australian teachers spend too much time doing busy work and admin and less time teaching compared to other countries.

“Instead, they spend more time on general administration, such as communication, paperwork and other clerical duties,” it said.

Commissioner Natalie Siegel-Brown said governments needed to focus on reducing the workload.

“Ideas we are testing to improve teaching quality include giving teachers more time to teach,” she said.

“At the moment our teachers are overly burdened with low-value tasks and they spend less time teaching than their international counterparts.”