by Byron Scaf
Australia’s secondary school system needs a revamp to ensure today’s students leave as critical thinkers, problem solvers and leaders of tomorrow. Recent NAPLAN results show that one-third of Australia’s children are not proficient in numeracy or literacy, leaving us trailing far behind our international peers and demonstrating the urgent need for classroom reforms.
With state and territory education ministers currently negotiating a new decade-long funding deal, the future of our nation’s secondary schools is at stake. However, ‘more funding’ is simply not the answer — there must be a reconsideration of how existing education funds are distributed and used, as well as the reforms needed to drive measurable improvements for students of all levels.
Schools must prioritise investing in high-quality science and maths materials
With the rapid pace of technological change, our curriculum needs to be ever-evolving and updated regularly with the latest science, technology and global trends. For science and maths education in particular, instructional materials need to be high-quality, comprehensive and relevant to students’ lives to ensure they remain engaged and don’t fall drastically behind competing nations.
High-quality instructional materials must rigorously cover the Australian curriculum standards, provide a sequenced program of learning across grade levels explicitly designed to build student capability over time, provide classroom activities required to teach programs, and offer tools and alternatives within activities to differentiate based on student needs and backgrounds.
Research has found that switching to higher quality curriculum resources increases student results by up to 12% every year, compounding over time. Furthermore, making these curriculum changes is cheap, and approximately 40 times more cost effective than class size reduction.
Utilising high-quality materials that meet these standards will not only help students to excel, but also save educators copious amounts of administrative time. In fact, research has found that use of high-quality instructional materials saves 89 per cent of teachers more time, which they can invest back into their students.
Creating and implementing materials like this is not a far-off dream. These solutions are available now and it is crucial that schools start prioritising the purchasing of these materials to teach our future leaders today.
Equity within the Australian school system does not exist today
Increased education funding will be useless if it continues to be funnelled into existing systems and processes. The current education system is segmented and unfair, working to disadvantage certain groups of students who do not have access to functional devices and high quality instructional materials.
According to Learning Creates, Australia has the fourth most socially segregated system in the world (behind Hungary, Chile and Israel), meaning disadvantaged students are strongly tied to their socio-economic background.
Without equal access, where all students across the country have access to the same high-quality materials, we will continue to see a decline in results in literacy and numeracy. A report by the Australian Government found that secondary school completion rates in public schools fell from 83 per cent to 76 per cent in the last six years, with disadvantaged students three times more likely to fall behind their classmates.
The best way to improve student outcomes is to start by providing effective support to educators. Schools and principals who prioritise the high-quality instruction materials their educators need, will ensure our literacy and numeracy skills are being upheld and that no student is left behind, regardless of their postcode.
NSW has the opportunity to lead a stepchange while curriculum standards are changing
High-quality instructional materials to create a more equitable education system will not only benefit students. Rates of burnout in the education industry are rife with a growing number (35 per cent) of teachers reporting they plan to leave the profession before retirement. Of this, five per cent of teachers report planning to leave the profession within a year, and a further eight per cent report their intent to leave in the next two to four years.
Teachers’ workloads continue to grow as staff shortages put mounting pressure on those who remain in the profession. Investing in comprehensive materials that provide adequate support to teachers will collectively save tens of thousands of hours of lesson planning and design time, done largely after work hours.
With a sense of urgency and the right resources, principals and schools can better equip teachers for science and maths education and free up more time for them to ensure all students have equal learning opportunities. These instructional materials are just the start, but they form the base of a strong school system and play a vital role in helping future Australians catch up to competing nations on the global stage.
Byron Scaf is the CEO and co-founder of Stile Education, a leading digital learning platform offering science teaching resources to enhance students’ and teachers’ classroom experiences.