There is the very good news, and the not so good news. Last week, ACT schools were rated as the best in the world. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Program for International Student Assessment rated reading, mathematics and science skills of 265,000 15-year-olds across 32 nations in the developed world.
Australia was up with the best and the ACT was the best jurisdiction in Australia. Overall, it meant that the ACT was doing best.
In national comparisons, only Finland had significantly better reading literacy than Australia; only Japan had significantly better mathematical literacy and only Japan and Korea had significantly better scientific literacy. The ACT on its own outranked Finland in reading, Japan in mathematical literacy and both Japan and Korea in scientific literacy – putting it on top of the world.
That said, Canberra is an affluent city state and no doubt there would be pockets of places in the high-performing countries that would be up with us.
We should be proud but no complacent. It is an endorsement of the college system, which has been adopted elsewhere is Australia, and it puts the lie to the endless whinges that “‘standards are falling” and “”no-one teaches the basics any more”.
The not so good news is that whereas the ACT has a higher percentage of students in the top levels of the three tested areas, we, like all Australian jurisdictions, have a greater spread of performance. It means our poorest-performing students are doing worse than the poorest-performing students of the high-ranking countries.
We must do more to ensure that all students get the best possible educational opportunity. It is through education that we get a better society. The correlation between high education and better health, income, longevity, low crime and a dozen other indicators of well-being is powerful indeed. The returns on investment are often long-term – usually longer than the three-year political cycle, but in the case of the OECD testing, politicians had better watch out. This was the first test, but the OECD intends to repeat the test every three years. It will be a test of our political will, educational administration and teaching capacity as well as the skills of the children tested.
Parents will be hoping the ACT maintains it top position, but will also be looking to an improvement in the performance at the bottom. We will be hoping for a lower percentage of students in the lowest fifth bracket among the three areas tested.