By Lucy Carroll and Christopher Harris
Australian teenagers have fallen almost two full academic years behind students who went to school in the early 2000s, with nearly half of pupils failing to reach national standards in maths and reading in the latest round of international tests.
The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) results reveals the huge achievement gap between the richest and poorest students is continuing to expand after a $320 billion school funding deal was signed more than four years ago.
Despite the lacklustre results, Australia regained its place in the international top 10 for the first time since 2003, but testing authorities say that is largely due to the decline of other countries, rather than significant local improvement.
Singapore was the highest-performing country in all subject areas in 2022, with a mean score of 575 points in maths, 561 in science and 543 in reading, compared with Australia’s 487, 507 and 498.
In NSW, more than 20 per cent of students are now classified as low performers, meaning they do not have the skills and knowledge to allow them to adequately participate in the workforce.
Overall, the proportion of low performers in maths, reading and science has doubled since 2000, while at the same time the number of high-performing students has fallen.
The findings underscore glaring inequities in the nation’s education system: 15-year-olds from disadvantaged families lag their advantaged counterparts by five years of schooling. Indigenous students are around four years behind non-Indigenous students.
Australian students’ performance has remained steady compared with the PISA results released in 2019.Credit: Louise Kennerley
Lisa De Bortoli, a co-author of the Australian PISA report, said for NSW students there was no significant change in maths and reading results since 2015. However, science results improved across the state between 2018 and 2022.
Overall, the latest PISA results – the first since the COVID-19 pandemic – show the nation’s education system has stagnated since the last report was released in 2019.
Australia was now below only nine other countries in mathematics – compared with 22 in 2018 – and eight for science and reading, De Bortoli said. Those countries include Singapore, Macao, Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Estonia and Canada.
It was above the OECD average for all subjects including maths after failing to exceed the figure in 2018. But De Bortoli said the OECD average for both maths and reading had fallen significantly.
“While it’s encouraging that Australia’s results have stabilised, it’s important to recognise that our position in the top 10 is largely due to the performance of other countries dropping below ours,” she said.
“We’ve got almost half of our 15-year-olds, they’re treading water … in terms of having those elementary skills that they’re expected to have at an age when they should be swimming.”
Andreas Schleicher, OECD director for education and skills, pointed to Ireland as one country that had outperformed Australia over time because teaching was a prestigious profession, and they had less focus on class size.
When it came to high performing Asian countries, Schleicher said there was less freedom for the teacher to interpret the curriculum, and parent involvement in education varied.
“One of the factors that may have contributed to Australia’s long-term slide is the loss in [the academic] demand on students … It’s become easier for students to be successful, and that’s not what you see in East Asia.”
“High performing systems … take [parents] as co-constructors of learning opportunity. They’re very active in making sure that parents do play their part.”
Schleicher said students who report feeling anxious without devices near them have lower maths results, and that school-wide bans on smartphones at school was the only effective way to reduce technology distraction in the classroom.
The latest results show more than 40 per cent of Australian students in the lowest socioeconomic quartile were low performers in maths. About 12 per cent of Australian students performed at a high level in mathematics, compared with Singapore’s 41 per cent.
“Students from the lowest socioeconomic background are six times more likely to be low performers than their more advantaged peers,” De Bortoli said. “We also have 10 per cent more low-performing students compared to when testing began in 2000.”
“Every child should have the right to develop strong literacy and numeracy skills, and the data shows we aren’t doing that,” she said.
Australia’s students are now the equivalent of about four school years behind in maths compared with students in the world’s top-performing country, Singapore, and almost three behind in science and more than two in reading.
PISA is normally held every three years to test the higher-order thinking skills of 15-year-olds. In 2022, tests were taken by about 690,000 students from 81 countries, including 13,437 from Australia.
Australian students’ performance has fallen over past two decades, with maths dropping 37 points since 2003, science falling 20 points since 2006 and reading down 30 points since 2000. De Bertoli said 20 points is roughly equal to one year of learning.
Australian girls suffered their biggest drop in reading, falling half an academic year behind compared to their peers who sat the test in 2018.
Just over half achieved the national proficient standard: 51 per cent in maths, 58 per cent in science and 57 per cent in reading.
Students of migrants and those born in other countries outperformed Australian-born students in maths and reading. In both those domains, there were fewer Australian-born than foreign-born children who achieved national proficient standard.
When school and student-level socioeconomic background is factored in, both independent and government schools perform better than Catholic schools in maths and science. For reading, results showed there was no advantage for independent students, but government students performed better than Catholic students.
Federal Education Minister Jason Clare said the results highlighted the need to fix the funding and education gap in Australian schools.
“Students from poor families, Indigenous students and students from the regional areas are more likely to need additional support,” he said.
“The PISA assessment highlights that Australia has a good education system, but it can be a lot better and fairer.”
Australian Education Union president Correna Haythorpe said government funding for public schools had increased by 17 per cent between 2012 and 2021 but funding for private schools had risen by double that amount in the same time.
“Unacceptable achievement gaps between students from different backgrounds and locations are a clear reminder we don’t have an equitable education system that can meet the needs of every child,” Haythorpe said.
Glenn Fahey, research fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies, said the halt to a long-term slide in international rankings may “bring some relief, but there’s also no cause for a victory lap”.
“For all the talk of funding and equity as goals of the system, our approaches to these challenges don’t appear to be working.
“The best that can be said for one of the world’s biggest influxes of school funding is that results have flatlined. And, despite concern for lifting the system’s equity, the richer are getting smarter and the poor are falling further behind. For all the Gonski ‘good-feels’ about equity, we’re not making any headway in raising educational opportunity,” Fahey said.
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With Robyn Grace