policy & reform
problems. What we need to look at is the
fact that it is a test, an examination, and that
some people simply don’t do well in tests.
And for some people, it can be an incredibly
stressful situation. So we need to look at a
case-by-case basis and ensure that, again,
we’re not preventing someone from joining
the profession who might make an excellent
contribution to it. An arbitrary barrier, in
We have a real problem
around equity in Australia, and
in raising the gap between
equity groups.
a sense, can sometimes prevent us from
welcoming into the profession people who
really should be there, particularly if they’ve
done four years of training in an initial
teacher education program.
What do you think gave rise to this slip
down the international rankings in literacy
and numeracy that we’ve seen in PISA, for
instance? And can we ever get back up?
It’s an interesting question, and we really
need to understand PISA. These are the
international tests that are run in cycles
by the OECD, and what we have seen is
that our performance on PISA, since it
started in 2000, has gradually declined.
And that is a worry. How come the
performance of Australian students is
gradually declining?
We need to look at it and ask questions,
but we also need to understand the test.
The test is about how young people apply
what they learn at school to real world
problems. So it’s a specific kind of test. It’s
telling us that over that period, the ability
of Australian students to look at a real
world problem and offer solutions to it is
dropping. It’s not telling us that our students
are performing less well on, say, literacy
and numeracy and all of those things.
So we need to ask, “What are these tests
telling us?” That’s a concern, but there
are also some answers in the PISA results,
because what PISA focuses on is not just
performance, but on who is and who isn’t
performing well. So, consistently now, the
PISA results have raised for us in our society
the very important question of equity. And
what we do see is that there are very big
differences in how well different groups
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of students do on the PISA results. And
so we have a very large group of students
in low equity groups: young people from
low socioeconomic backgrounds, some
young people from languages other than
English, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
students, and we need to look carefully. It’s
not everyone in those groups.
Again, we can look at those groups and
say there are groups within groups who are
not doing well, and the PISA results allow us
to look at that. And they have been raising
a red flag for a number of years now about
equity in Australia and how we’re not doing
as well as similar countries in closing that
equity gap.
So, I think the question is not so much
what do PISA results tell us about young
peoples’ performance, but what do PISA
results tell us about our education systems
and how we educate young people in
the kinds of policies we’re choosing. And
what it’s telling us is that whatever else
we’re doing in education seems to be
clamping down, seems to be reducing
young people’s ability to apply what they
learned to real world problems. Now, in
the 21st century, when a lot of people say
that’s increasingly what we need our young
people to be doing – to be able to take the
knowledge they learn in schools and apply
it elsewhere – that’s a big concern.
But it also raises concerns about what’s
going on in our schooling system that
these equity gaps aren’t closing and that we
still have what’s often described as a long
tail of equity in terms of results. There’s
a very large group of young people who
simply aren’t doing well and not doing as
well as they should.
Are international rankings like PISA
important for us?
We didn’t have them not so long ago.
We do have them now, so they’re more
recent ways of gauging our performance
compared to other countries and
within Australia of making some kind of
assessment of our education systems. What
we need to be careful of is how we use
those results. We can excuse a kind of a
poor practice around the use and discussion
of these kinds of indicators, because they
are fairly new. And when you are first
presented with new information, it takes
a little while to understand it. What does it
actually tell us? How can we use it sensibly?
We need to remember that with our
NAPLAN results, for example, the fact
that we report our results and make it
a public sort of performance has an
impact on schooling systems – it drives
competition between schools. Now,
some people might say that’s a good
thing – and there may be elements of
it that are good – but we need to look
closely at the impact.
Coming back to the discussion, all of our
PISA results and the fact that we have a real
problem around equity in Australia, and in
raising the gap between equity groups, we
need to look at the impact of competition
between schools on equity groups. So are
all of our young people attending schools
where they are getting access to the same
kinds of resources and the same kinds of
opportunities?
That’s a really important question. And
the way in which schools are currently
funded, and the variation in the funding
levels between schools, would suggest
that’s not the case, and that we’ve got
some young people attending schools –
for example, in country towns and some
parts of large metropolitan areas – who
don’t have equal access to the same kinds
of resources as others.
Therefore, we’re getting these place
differences in the type of education that
is available. So when we drive markets,
when we create markets, we have these
unintended effects of making some places
more desirable to teach in, to live in, than
others, and some schools more desirable
to attend than others. So, these are some
of the influences that come from the
continual reporting of results.
As a society, we need to become more
intelligent about how we understand these
results. What are they telling us? What are
the effects they’re having?
We’ve had over 10 years of NAPLAN
reporting. We can now look back and
say, “Well, what has been the impact of
that reporting?” The questions we can ask
are not just what’s happening to student
performance, but what are the impacts of
the test reporting on student performance
and on what’s happening in the classroom.
So these national and international tests
are not neutral indicators of systems of
schooling. They’re actually driving certain
kinds of behaviours within those systems.
And that’s what we need to focus on
more. What are the unintended and
perhaps perverse negative consequences
of some of the reporting systems we have
in place? ■