The Australian – Natasha Bita
“Long-time “chalkie’’ Peter Collier taught in high school classrooms for 23 years before his election to parliament. Now the West Australian Education Minister is determined to stop the long-term slide in educational standards that risks turning Australia into the dunce of the developed world. “Early intervention is absolutely vital,’’ he tells Inquirer. “If we don’t provide the foundation of literacy and numeracy skills in the early years, kids will play catch-up all their lives. A lot of our social issues stem from the fact we have set too low a standard for literacy and numeracy. It might be a feel-good factor to graduate all our kids, but that’s just putting a Band-Aid on a broken arm.’’ In a “tough love’’ policy, Collier is forcing the state’s school-leavers to pass a basic literacy and numeracy exam to receive a graduation certificate. Otherwise, he says, 5000 Year 12 students will leave school each year without the basic skills to find a job, study at university or start an apprenticeship. The state also has diverted $45 million a year in funding from high schools to primary schools, to focus on the “3Rs” in the first few years of schooling. The dumbing down of a generation of Australian students was exposed in the 2012 Program for International Student Assessment report. Nearly half of Australia’s 15-year-olds lacked basic maths skills and a third were functionally illiterate, the international test revealed. In 2003, Australia ranked 11th out of 65 among OECD countries in maths performance. By 2012, the ranking slipped to 19th place. Australian students slipped from sixth place to 16th in science; and from fourth to equal 13th in literacy. Migrant children performed better than locally born students.”(more)