Time for a quiet word about rowdy classes

EVEN the students admit it: Australian schools tend to be on the rowdy side.

Reema Ali, with students from her Year 10 geography class at Randwick Girls High School in Sydney yesterday, says classroom noise is more a reflection on the teacher. Picture: James Croucher

EVEN the students admit it: Australian schools tend to be on the rowdy side.

About one-third of 15-year-old high school students say their class often ignores what their teacher is saying and about two in five characterise their classrooms as noisy and disorderly.

For almost one in five students, their classroom is so disruptive they find it difficult to work.

Among the 65 countries surveyed by the OECD group of industrialised nations, Australia ranks No 34, just above the average level of disciplined classrooms but behind the US and Britain as well as many Asian and eastern European countries.

Australian classrooms are slightly worse than the average in terms of listening to the teacher, as is Finland, which is one of the top nations in international literacy and numeracy tests including those run by the OECD.

In fact, Finnish classrooms are some of the noisiest in the world, with half the students reporting noise and disorder occurs frequently, bucking the trend that an orderly and quiet classroom is most conducive to high student performance.

The OECD's monthly newsletter focusing on findings from its three-yearly test of 15-year-olds in reading, maths and science -- known as the Program for International Student Assessment -- says the test results show students in orderly classrooms tend to perform better. The impact is more marked for students from socially disadvantaged families, where a well-managed classroom can help students close the gap on their more affluent peers.

Teachers such as Reema Ali say the key to an orderly classroom is ensuring students are engaged in what they are learning.

A social sciences teacher at Randwick Girls High in Sydney's east, Ms Ali says a noisy and out-of-control classroom is more a reflection on the teacher than the students. "I thoroughly believe that classroom management goes hand-in-hand with a range of teaching strategies," she said yesterday. "I care for all types of students, and I adapt what I do for individual students. I try to meet every student's needs."

Some schools that have radically changed the way they teach in recent years, introducing open-plan classrooms enabling students to work in small groups on projects, have counter-intuitively resulted in quieter schools and better behaved students.

For Australian teachers, noise is not necessarily a bad thing; the distinction is between noise that is disruptive from students mucking up, and noise that is constructive from students talking about their work. After more than 40 years teaching, Parramatta Marist High School principal Brother Pat Howlett has had to adjust his expectations of acceptable decibel levels in the classroom.

"I used to think that a quiet classroom was a good classroom, but it gives you no earthly idea to gauge what they're learning," he said.

The deputy principal at Randwick Girls High School, Lance Raskall, agrees. "It's a fine line. You don't want a hush-hush classroom, and constructive noise is good. Engaged students are going to ask questions of the teacher and each other," he said.

Mr Raskall said the technological invasion of schools, particularly the introduction of laptops and interactive whiteboards, had improved students' interest in their lessons, but also raised noise levels.

"It's not chalk and talk anymore; students are exploring as they're talking, they're using the internet and finding out what you're talking about while you're talking," he said. "They're very engaged because it's very relevant and it's in front of them. It's immediate."

Mr Raskall said disadvantaged students were often the highest performers and best behaved, because they knew education was a way to improve their lives, while some students that came from private schools "have not been the best students in the class by any stretch".

The OECD survey is conducted among students who are mostly in Year 9, widely acknowledged as the most challenging year for managing student behaviour and keeping them interested in school.

To address this, Parramatta Marist introduced "project-based learning" in Year 9 about five years ago, in which students work in small groups on projects in their subjects or across more than one subject over a period of weeks. It has been so successful, the school has since expanded the approach to years 7, 8 and 10.