Queensland fixing bad teaching

Tuesday’s national literacy and numeracy (NAPLAN) results for school students are “broadly stable”, according to national testing agency ACARA – which is better than in many previous years. But, the agency warns, “collective action” is needed to lift results for disadvantaged students, which includes everybody in Queensland. While ACARA does not explain why, the Sunshine State is in a shadow cast from states to the south. There is a reason for that and it is not the education establishment’s usual excuse for everything: not enough money. Rather, Queensland lags because its previous Labor government and its allies in the public teachers’ union stuck to ideology over science, with learning being about creativity as teachers helped children use their own experiences to learn to read and count. The evidence was always the opposite, that for children to learn they need to be taught; but this was too much like asking accountability from teachers for the union to wear.

The new NAPLAN results demonstrate what works. Queensland lags NSW and Victoria on reading and numeracy for all four school years tested. Victoria uses “explicit instruction” in the public system and NSW has a nation-leading syllabus designed to deliver the basics of education so that children are taught the basics – maths, reading, writing and grammar. Apologists for substandard NAPLAN results, not just in Queensland, will argue ACARA’s call for “collective action” can only mean more money, even though all the cash in the commonwealth will not compensate for locking teachers into dud ways of teaching.

What will work is for the nation to follow NSW’s lead. Federal Education Minister Jason Clare gets this, as did his Coalition predecessor, Alan Tudge. Mr Tudge was so exasperated by teacher education faculties that did not teach direct instruction methods that he threatened universities’ funding.

Mr Clare has gone further, tying $16.5bn in additional funding for the states to their using direct instruction teaching and learning methods in public schools. And for teachers who were not taught how to teach effectively at universities, the Albanese government has funded online courses to help them.

In March, Queensland became the last state to sign on to the agreement. Reform of its public school syllabus is under way, with a phonics check ready to go and a numeracy check to start next year. With the Crisafulli government not pals with the state teachers’ union, in a few years, hopefully, it might catch up to other states on NAPLAN scores, which are better everywhere.