Tasmania, school dropout state

Despite Tasmania spending more than other states per capita on education, its education failures are a scandal, demanding urgent and effective reform. The year 12 completion rate of only 53 per cent is the worst of any state, well below the national average of 76 per cent. NAPLAN data shows students’ literacy and numeracy skills decline as they progress through schooling.

The causes, Tasmania correspondent Matthew Denholm writes, are deeply embedded, including an archaic system in which many state secondary schools stop at year 10. Students wanting to progress need to go to city-based colleges for years 11 and 12. Many do not make the transition, especially if they need to travel. Teachers unions and the bureaucracy, seemingly indifferent to the damage done, have resisted previous reform efforts. Successive governments have been too slow to extend secondary schools to year 12, leaving state school students the most disadvantaged. Many non-government schools operate up to year 12, but their students also underperform. Shaky foundations in the early years of primary education are part of the problem.

Tasmania has been slow to re-embrace phonics. Struggling students often are not kept back a grade. Remedial intervention is limited. A weak curriculum, lacking rigour, and lack of direct instruction do not help. Nor does a later school starting age.

Liberal Premier Jeremy Rockliff’s minority government has begun a review, headed by former Northern Territory education chief executive Vicki Baylis, in tandem with the Tasmanian education bureaucracy. If it proves a damage-limitation exercise, it will compound failure for years to come.