‘Australia’s long-term slide’ in reading, maths and science, PISA results show

Being taught ideological rubbish instead of a real education shows

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.

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.

https://www.smh.com.au/education/australia-s-long-term-slide-in-reading-maths-and-science-pisa-results-show-20231204-p5ep03.html

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Anthony Albanese under pressure to lift nuclear ban from senior Labor, union figures

Senior Labor and union figures are pushing the Albanese government to lift the ban on nuclear energy to help shield jobs and achieve net zero emissions, as new polling reveals urban voters support cheaper and reliable ­energy supply ahead of the renewables rollout.

After Emmanuel Macron and former Labor minister Joel Fitzgibbon called on the government to remove prohibitions on nuclear energy at the COP28 summit, Australian Workers’ Union national secretary Paul Farrow said nuclear energy must be on the table to protect heavy industry.

Ahead of Chris Bowen flying to Dubai for the UN climate change conference on Wednesday, Mr Farrow said “if you really believe climate change is a crisis you should be open minded to every single emission reduction option on the table”.

The AWU national secretary, who in July replaced long-time nuclear energy advocate Daniel Walton, said it is “better for the planet if Australia makes steel and aluminium and glass than if those products are made in less regulated countries”.

“But if we want those industries to stay standing we need to accept that some combination of coal, gas or nuclear power is necessary. If nuclear power doesn’t stack up on cost today, that’s one thing. But objecting because of outdated twentieth century ideology is another,” Mr Farrow told The Australian.

“Right now Australia cannot sustain, let alone grow, its heavy industry sector on renewables alone. One day we’ll get there, but anyone serious will tell you that day is a fair way off.”

Mr Fitzgibbon, a former defence and agriculture minister who represented the coalmining electorate of Hunter for 26 years, said the nuclear ban “makes no sense” because every option should be considered.

As the Coalition ramps-up pressure on the government over its renewables-only focus, Mr Fitzgibbon said the world won’t meet its net zero emissions aspirations without installing more nuclear plants.

Another senior Labor figure, who didn’t want to speak publicly, said there was an inevitability in the science community that there’d be a public debate on the uses of nuclear energy, which was only accentuated by the AUKUS agreement.

Mr Fitzgibbon, who led pushback inside Labor ranks following the 2019 election to present a more realistic climate change plan, warned too much faith in a few favoured technologies was a “recipe for failure and economic harm”.

“On the question of whether Australia should also embrace nuclear generation, that should be a matter for the market. Therefore, the prohibition on nuclear generation in Australia should be lifted. It simply makes no sense and every electricity generation option should be readily available to us,” Mr Fitzgibbon said.

“Having said that, if the ban was lifted, it would be a long time – if ever – before we saw a nuclear generator in Australia. It’s hard enough to secure an approval for gas extraction, let alone for a nuclear plant.”

Jim Chalmers, a member of the AWU, rejected any push to lift the moratorium on nuclear power, saying the economics didn’t stack up.

“Nuclear energy doesn’t make sense for Australia, it doesn’t make economic sense and even if it did, it would take too long. We have remarkable advantages here – geological, geographical meteorological – and we need to maximise those advantages,” Dr Chalmers said.

“That means getting more renewable energy into the system so that we can get cleaner and cheaper energy, and broaden and deepen our industrial base.”

The Coalition for Conservation group is hosting Liberal and Nationals MPs and senators at COP28 including opposition energy spokesman Ted O’Brien, Bridget McKenzie, Kevin Hogan, David Gillespie, Dean Smith, Andrew Bragg and Perin Davey.

The fight over nuclear power comes as new CT Group polling testing climate change and energy sentiment in capital cities across the globe reveals a majority of Sydney and Melbourne voters support more investment in combating climate change. However, the poll found support plunged if monthly taxes increased by $15 or $100 per month.

The Global Energy Insights survey found urban voters in the two capital cities ranked keeping energy prices down (40 per cent) as the top priority ahead of keeping energy supply reliable (31 per cent) and transitioning to renewables (29 per cent). The poll showed a +6 favourability towards nuclear, well behind solar, wind and hydro.

CT Group Australia managing-director Catherine Douglas said “costs are the prism through which Australians are measuring everything at the moment”.

“While some segments of the community are advocating for extreme solutions or for government to back winners like nuclear, solar, or wind farms, what the electorate is looking for is a sensible transition to lower emissions energy supply,” Ms Douglas said.

“The business community and voters are of one mind on the need for a pragmatic approach that is not captive to special interests or extremist advocacy at either end of the debate.”

A US-led pledge on the COP28 sidelines to triple global nuclear capacity by 2050, which the government shunned, was endorsed by more than 20 countries. Of the 22 countries who joined the pledge, 18 have existing nuclear energy industries. Fourteen countries with nuclear energy industries, including Germany, did not sign the pledge.

Investor Group on Climate Change chief executive Rebecca Mikula-Wright, who represents super funds and investors managing more than $30tn in assets, said investors were looking for the least-cost pathways for decarbonisation. The IGCC chief said there was “no interest right now” among investors about using nuclear energy to achieve net zero emissions by 2050.

“Comparatively, nuclear has project time blowouts of anything from seven to 15+ years and cost blowouts in the 10s of billions. It just means that, as a technology, it is much further down the field when you’ve got the lowest cost technologies, renewables, batteries and so on, that are available to deploy now, that are more on budget and more on time comparatively than nuclear,” Ms Mikula-Wright said.

Peter Dutton said it was sensible for Australia to embrace nuclear energy just as other developed countries had done, labelling Mr Macron’s call to revoke the nuclear power ban “a cry of common sense”.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/anthony-albanese-under-pressure-to-lift-nuclear-ban-from-senior-labor-union-figures/news-story/36863f8d1940e8d5ec7d3be147195625

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Political backlash awaits Labor unless migration is tamed

As the end of the year approaches, the Albanese government faces several major policy challenges. If they are left unattended, there will be a range of adverse conseq­uences, including political ones.

Immigration is a policy area that requires immediate attention lest the large numbers of migrants, both coming and staying, continue to fuel the housing crisis.

With the benefit of hindsight, the government made several missteps in the management of the immigration portfolio. This goes beyond the bungled handling of indefinite detention. Errors include sticking with migration targets set by the previous Coalition government; underestimating the effects of the so-called catch-up after the pandemic; and altering visa conditions to make Australia an even more attractive destination for less skilled migrants.

By throwing more resources at departmental visa processing, it was only several months after Labor was elected that the number of migrant arrivals began to swell.

The key here is net overseas migration: the difference between long-term arrivals and long-term departures. Before Covid, net overseas migration was averaging just more than 200,000 a year. According to the latest figure, NOM was more than 450,000 for the year ending in the March quarter. More recent figures point to annual NOM exceeding 500,000.

In addition to natural population increase – which is only about 120,000 a year – what this means is that close to 600,000 have been added to the population in a year. This is almost half the population of Adelaide and over 100,000 more than the population of Canberra. But migrants largely are heading for Melbourne and Sydney, not Adelaide or Canberra.

International students dominate NOM. According to the federal Department of Education, there were 726,000 international students studying in Australia in January-August, an increase of 31 per cent across the same period last year.

The proportion of university enrolments made up of international students is about one-third overall; it is more than 40 per cent in some cases. For those without direct exposure to higher education, these proportions may come as a surprise.

About 70 per cent of international students express a desire to stay in Australia permanently. To underpin these hopes, Labor has made post-graduation visas more generous, significantly increasing the time visa holders can stay in the country. This is contributing to fewer migrant departures than may have been expected.

Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil commissioned a panel chaired by Martin Parkinson to look into Australia’s migration system in 2022. The report was released in April. While the panel was not asked to look at migrant numbers, one of its principal findings was the lack of coherence between the permanent and temporary parts of the system.

With close to two million on temporary visas, the panel concluded: “It is hard to conceive of Australians willingly agreeing to the creation of a ‘permanently temporary’ cohort of workers, akin to guest workers seen in other countries.” The only substantive response to the report was the lifting of the Temporary Skilled Migration Income Threshold from just under $54,000 to $70,000 a year from July. This means temporary workers must earn at least the higher figure to secure a visa. Temporary workers in areas of short supply also have been provided with favourable access to permanent residence.

So working on the basis that NOM is too high and will likely remain so, what are the policy options for government? While it’s likely NOM will fall next year of its own accord, the magnitude of the fall will be insufficient to deal with the economic and political downsides of the net migrant intake.

The options include imposing caps on the key temporary visa categories; levying a tax on international students; altering some visa conditions, including reducing the allowable period of stay for those on post-graduation visas; and further increasing the minimum salary payable to temporary workers. Imposing caps will involve logistical headaches. The rationed numbers would need to be allocated over the year and between applicants. It’s unlikely first come, first served would work.

Higher education institutions will jockey for favourable treatment. Expect the Group of Eight – the sandstone universities – to claim they enrol the best students and need special deals. Other institutions, including regional ones, may argue it’s time they got a higher share of international students and the allocation of visas should reflect this. The government should expect a bunfight among the educated elites working in higher education, some of which we have seen in these pages.

There is discussion of the case for a tax on international students to offset the external costs that migrants impose. Whether such a tax would dissuade many students is not clear, although the direction of the effect is clear. Whether the effect is big or small, there would be gains: fewer international students or a substantial source of new tax revenue to offset the costs.

While it is true the higher education system would lose some revenue that is used to fund research, there are serious question marks over the value of some of this research, particularly in the humanities and social sciences.

The expansion of international student numbers has led to a massive upsurge in research funding rather than being directed to better education for students, both domestic and international.

Jim Chalmers needs his department to undertake some more detailed analysis of the fiscal implications of different NOM levels. Using a set of unrealistic assumptions, Treasury asserts every NOM arrival essentially adds $100,000 a year to GDP, with about one-third being made up of tax revenue. According to this logic, a lower NOM necessarily means less tax revenue.

But the dominance of students in the NOM makes these estimates nonsensical. Most students won’t earn much above the tax-free threshold, so any tax take is trivial. There is also the issue of the costs that long-term arrivals impose, costs that are often picked up by state governments.

The migration system should serve our national interest rather than deliver narrow benefits to businesses and sectional interests.

We are witnessing a significant electoral backlash across several countries to the way in which migration programs have operated.

Unless the size of the migrant intake is scaled back and the system’s integrity improved, there is every reason to think this will happen here.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/political-backlash-awaits-labor-unless-migration-is-tamed/news-story/3defa5835dd490da56275af80834a61f

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$2.3 million payout goes to the heart of Labor’s role in Brittany Higgins case

A lot of money to reward an accusation

It’s taken a defamation trial to discover the truth, but finally we know how much the Albanese government paid to settle Brittany Higgins’ untested claim that she would not be able to work for at least 40 years after allegedly being raped by Bruce Lehrmann.

If the figure itself is astounding – $2.3m – how much more extraordinary was the government’s determination to pay the money without challenging the veracity of the claim.

The payment went to the heart of Labor’s hopelessly conflicted role in this tawdry affair.

Leave aside the question of whether Higgins was raped by Lehrmann: Justice Michael Lee will answer that in due course when he hands down his decision on whether Network 10 was justified in reporting Higgins’ allegations.

Instead look at the supposed reason for the payment, as stated by Higgins in the witness box on Tuesday: that the commonwealth had admitted it had breached its duty of care to her and that “they didn’t go through proper processes, so that’s actually why they settled with me.”

The two women Higgins claimed had failed her were former ministers Linda Reynolds and Michaelia Cash, who were alleged to have exacerbated a “toxic and harmful” work environment, subjecting her to “victimisation, ostracism” and pressuring her not to discuss the assault or their response to it.

Each of those claims has been hotly disputed in the current defamation proceedings.

Indeed, on the evidence presented the only two people to encourage Higgins to go to the police were Reynolds and her then chief of staff Fiona Brown.

None of these women were asked to give evidence about what had occurred, before the commonwealth handed over $2.3m to Higgins, for what she claimed was 40 years of economic loss and the end of her pursuit of a future political career.

Reynolds was actively muzzled, as The Australian revealed a year ago, with the government threatening to tear up an agreement to pay her legal fees and any costs awarded unless she agreed not to attend a mediation.

The former Defence Industries minister was therefore unable to dispute any of Higgins’ allegations about a failure to support her or properly investigate the incident, a number of which were contested at Lehrmann’s criminal trial and again during these defamation proceedings.

The taxpayer-funded settlement was reached after a single ­sitting, astonishing lawyers familiar with such matters, and only revealed – without any details – in a late-night statement clearly ­designed to minimise media coverage.

The government has repeatedly refused to answer questions about its role in the settlement but has denied any involvement in the decision by Finance Minister Katy Gallagher, who was central in ­pursuing the Brittany Higgins saga against the former Morrison government when she was in ­opposition.

Text messages between Higgins and her boyfriend David Sharaz revealed by The Australian show the pair ­planned to directly enlist the help of senior Labor ­figures to pursue Ms Higgins’ rape allegation and her claim the Coalition government covered it up.

Higgins’ role as the face of the #MeToo movement came into sharp focus at the defamation trial on Tuesday when Whybrow played in court the speech Higgins made after Lehrmann’s criminal trial ended in a mistrial.

In the speech Higgins claimed “this is the reality of how complainants in sexual assault cases are treated” and made remarks about Lehrmann and the justice system that many lawyers argued at the time were highly prejudicial to a future trial.

On Tuesday Whybrow went one step further, asking Higgins if the speech was “designed to blow up a retrial”, a suggestion she denied.

Whybrow put it to her that by then she had become the figurehead of the #MeToo movement. “Accidentally, but yes”, Higgins agreed.

Whybrow’s proposition was that Higgins was doing everything she could to ensure there would not be another criminal trial, with its high standard of proof – beyond reasonable doubt – and that instead she wanted a civil trial where standard of proof was on the balance of probabilities.

Whybrow pointed to media reports in the days after Drumgold’s announcement that Lehrmann would file defamation proceedings.

Higgins responded on the same day with a social media post saying: “Following recent developments, I feel the need to make it clear I am willing to defend the truth as a witness in any potential civil action brought about by Mr Lehrmann.”

When someone replied: “You had your chance”, Higgins responded: “Appears like I may be gifted another one in a slightly more favourable court.”

Higgins agreed on Tuesday that she had been referring to a court with a lower standard of proof but said she would also have been willing to go through a criminal trial again.

“I put myself through the ­criminal court once I was gonna keep going. And then when it looked like he wanted to make money off being a rapist, I of course put my hand up and said please put me back in – and here I am.”

Linda Reynolds has asked the National Anti-Corruption Commission to investigate the compensation payment to Higgins.

As more witnesses give evidence in the defamation case over the coming days about Higgins’ claim she was abandoned by those who should have protected her, that case may become more pressing.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/23-million-payout-goes-to-the-heart-of-labors-role-in-brittany-higgins-case/news-story/5ff46997694fe5953cc1839d11d15265

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