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PISA survey does not give reasons for performance

Updated December 03, 2013 23:59:00

Dr Sue Thomson, the Director of Educational Monitoring and Research For ACER, The Independent Australian Council for Educational Research, discusses the results of the survey of high school students and why Australian students are slipping behind.

Source: Lateline | Duration: 10min 18sec

Topics: education, person, australia


EMMA ALBERICI, PRESENTER: Joining us now from our Melbourne studio is Dr Sue Thomson, the Director of Educational Monitoring and Research for ACER, the independent Australian Council for Educational Research. Dr Thomson is also the lead author of 'PISA 2012: How Australia Measures Up'.

Sue Thomson, thanks very much for joining us.


EMMA ALBERICI: Have you been able to establish why Australian student performance in maths and reading has slipped so far down over the past 10 years?

SUE THOMSON: Not from this report, no. This report is just basically looking at the results. We got the data at the end of August, so it's been a big effort to try to get this report ready in time for the OECD release.

But what we will be doing is taking those data and drilling down deeper into them over the next 12 months or so to look and see whether we can any indication of why.

But the PISA report in itself and the PISA assessment is a snapshot, so it can't actually answer those questions why. We have to look to other research for that.

EMMA ALBERICI: Do class sizes make any difference to student results?

SUE THOMSON: That's a difficult question to answer. In some ways, there's a lot of evidence that no, they don't. And so, on average, you would say that no, they don't. But in lower-achieving classrooms and classrooms where there are students with difficulties and other disadvantaged students, I think there is evidence to say that smaller class sizes or more teachers in a class do matter.

EMMA ALBERICI: The study found that students in the highest performing countries - Shanghai, China and Singapore - were about 2.5 times more likely to be coached in maths outside school hours. Doesn't that to an extent distort the findings, in that it's no longer a strict comparison of school education?

SUE THOMSON: That's very true to some extent. Yes, it is. But it is still - I think it's still looking at what the system produces and what the outputs of the system's educational systems are.

We can't exclude those students but what we can do is, when we do further analysis, look at ways in which we can take that extra tuition into account, look at students who are not necessarily having that coaching.

I know in Australia it's much more likely for high socioeconomic-level students to be having students than low socioeconomic students, for example. So there are some differences there. And yes, it will make up for some of the differences. But we don't know exactly at the moment how much of a difference that makes.

EMMA ALBERICI: If we look at so specific aspects of the the Australian test results from this study, Indigenous students or students from the lowest socioeconomic backgrounds are the equivalent of 2.5 years behind in maths and reading. How do we address that as a country?

SUE THOMSON: Well, I think that's a good question and I think it requires a number of different approaches. There's never going to be a one-size-fits-all answer to that question.

In terms of mathematics education, I know that from the Trends in International Maths and Science Study, for example, we found that Australia has one of the highest proportions of maths teachers teaching out of field in the world. So that's certainly an issue and I know with the Australian Association of Maths Teachers, they've said that's a big issue.

In terms of Indigenous students, there are a whole lot of different aspects there. There are aspects to do with socioeconomic background, there are aspects to do with kids understanding that coming to school is the only way that they are going to get better at what they're doing. There are a whole bunch of different aspects to do with being an Indigenous student, depending on where you are and what your particular circumstances are.

So while there's not a one-size-fits-all, I think we have to look at a number of different approaches but they have to be sustained approaches over a number of years. It takes a while to turn the education system around.

EMMA ALBERICI: There are obviously low socioeconomic pockets and pockets of disadvantage in other countries as well. Can we look to anywhere else in the world to help give us an idea of how to address the problem?

SUE THOMSON: Yes. I think that one of the countries that is a target for Australian research is Canada. Canada has a similar mix of students to what we have, similar issues with Indigenous students that we have. And I think that they have, certainly in some areas more than others, they are dealing with those differences better so that they're achieving a much more equitable outcome for their students. So certainly countries like Canada we can look to and see what they're doing.

Other countries even, such as Germany where there are high immigrant populations, we can look at and see, see what they're doing that we may be able to learn from.

EMMA ALBERICI: Now, since 2003, over the last decade, school funding has gone up quite significantly in Australia, while maths and reading skills of students has gone down. Doesn't that suggest that the debate about Gonski misses the point? That student performance doesn't have a lot to do with funding?

SUE THOMSON: I think there's some debate about the amount of funding issue. I think there's some debate from the World Bank, for example, about whether the increase or the large increase in funding includes the money that went into the economic stimulus package, for example.

And so whether, if we take that funding out of it, whether the amount spent on education really isn't as much as it's supposed to be. But also the amount of money that we spend on disadvantaged schools is not necessarily the same as in other countries as well.

EMMA ALBERICI: And you've previously expressed your support for the Gonski model of school funding. Is what you've just said then part of the reason why you support it: the fact that it does try to target the funding more specifically than it has been in the past?

SUE THOMSON: Yes, it is. Part of it's about lifting our performance and part of it is about providing the equity to Australian students that has been promised to them in things like the Melbourne declaration.

So whilst I don't think that just throwing money at a problem is going to be the answer, certainly money is an issue and certainly addressing the issues of attracting and retaining high-quality teachers, providing students with adequate resources for them to actually achieve: those things take money and I think that the targeted funding towards disadvantaged students and disadvantaged schools is absolutely essential.

EMMA ALBERICI: You've been a leading academic in this field for quite some time. I'm curious to know what you think is wrong with the current funding system, where it's let us down?

SUE THOMSON: I think in exactly that. I think that we haven't focused enough on disadvantaged students. We have a number of different programs. Some of them work, some of them don't. And I think we need to have a sustained funding model that provides adequate funding for those students who, through no fault of their own, don't have the same resources that others do. And so that's where I think that we really fall down and that's what I think we really need to address.

EMMA ALBERICI: Last year the former Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, set a goal for Australian students to be ranked in the top five in the world for reading maths and science by 2025. Can we get there, do you think?

SUE THOMSON: Twelve years: I guess we could. It's a whole new cohort of students that are going through. But we need to do things about it now. We need to address things like lower levels of literacy. The PERLS and TIMMS reports last year showed that grade four maths and grade four reading - grade four reading in particular was not at a very high world standard.

We need to look at those sort of things and we need to address those issues early in primary school so that, when students come up with problems, or when students are shown to have problems, somebody can deal with those. And not a class - not a teacher who has 30 other students that she's also or he's also trying to deal with. More teachers in classrooms to help with some of those disadvantaged students in terms of reading, to pull those reading literacy levels up before they go further on into secondary school and just get left behind in every subject.

EMMA ALBERICI: And very quickly, lastly: there's a lot of argument about how you lift teacher quality in this country. Do you know? Does anyone know?

SUE THOMSON: Oh, I wish I had the answer. I don't think anybody has the definitive answer to that, but there's certainly a number of things that we can look at.

We can look at how we attract high-quality students into teaching, for example: how we attract them and how we retain them; how we encourage them to go into disadvantaged schools and stay there; how we encourage them to go into provincial and remote schools and stay there for a certain period of time.

You know, it's got to be a whole lot of factors like that. But I think that the teacher quality issue is about attracting high-quality students who want to teach, retaining them and then making sure that they get adequate professional development. And making sure that all teachers get that. And I think that's another one of the issues that we have to deal with.

EMMA ALBERICI: Dr Sue Thomson, thanks so much for your time.

SUE THOMSON: Thanks a lot, Emma.