New analysis of 2022 NAPLAN data reveals disadvantaged teenage students are more than five years behind in reading and four years behind in maths compared to pupils from wealthier backgrounds.
A new report released by the Grattan Institute calls for small group tutoring in all Australian schools.Eddie Jim
In a report released by the Grattan Institute,the think tank calls for a national program of small-group tuition in all Australian schools to allow teachers to work with students in intensive sessions over one or two terms.
Grattan’s principal education adviser and the report’s co-author,Julie Sonnemann,said it was a myth that all the impacts of disadvantage happened before children start school.
“Education is supposed to be an equaliser,but the gap widens when children are at school,on our watch. The gap is,quite frankly,a national disgrace,” Sonnemann said.
OECD research shows about two in five Australian students fail to meet national proficiency standards in reading and maths by the time they are 15.
Students whose parents did not finish school start kindergarten well behind pupils from an educationally advantaged background,and the learning gap doubles in reading and maths between year 3 and year 9.
By year 9,children whose parents did not finish school are more than five years behind in reading compared to children whose parents have a university degree.
Sonnemann said:“Children are not developing basic skills in English and maths. This is functional literacy they need for work and later on in life. We are letting kids fall behind,and continue to fall behind.”
When students struggle to keep up in class it can spark a vicious cycle,and small problems in learning can “grow as academic demands increase,with devastating consequences”,the report says.
Students at Regents Park Christian School in western Sydney participated in a NSW government funded catch-up tutoring program.Ben Symons
The think tank said tutors working with groups of three students over at least 10 weeks would boost literacy and numeracy across all year levels. Sessions should be at least three times a week and should last up to an hour.
Rolling out tutoring in all government,Catholic and independent schools over five years would cost about $1 billion a year,but the Grattan Institute said the sessions would pay for themselves.
“If one in five students received high-quality small group tuition in 2023,they would collectively earn an extra $6 billion over their lifetimes,” it said.
”The change we are calling for is to integrate small group tutoring in schools over the longer term. It’s not a Band-Aid solution,but part of an approach that focuses on prevention,so any problems are identified early.“
The Grattan report comes as public education advocacy group Save Our Schools releases new analysis of NSW NAPLAN data that show 28 per cent of year 9 students whose parents did not finish high school were below the reading standard,35 per cent were below the writing standard and 15 per cent were below the numeracy standard.
For NSW year 9 students from more educationally advantaged backgrounds,3 per cent did not meet basic reading level,5 per cent did not meet writing standards and 1 per cent did not achieve the numeracy standard.
Save Our Schools national convenor Trevor Cobbold said:“These are shocking inequalities. In more than a decade,the results for teenage students from low socio-economic backgrounds have shown no change or become worse. The absolute scores for reading,writing and numeracy for year 9 students from low SES backgrounds all fell since 2010.”
to help students who fell behind during the pandemic to catch up. About 100,000 have been tutored through the COVID-19 tutoring program,which was extended to mid-2023.
At Regents Park Christian School in western Sydney,every student from year 7 to year 11 took two numeracy screening tests as part of the government-funded program.
The school’s diverse learning co-ordinator,Melinda Gindy,said 140 pupils at the school had received intensive tutoring in fundamental maths concepts. “We didn’t make any assumptions about knowledge. It gave students a chance to go over topics and not feel like they were being left behind,” she said.
Australian Council for Educational Research chief executive Geoff Masters said systematic small-group tutoring was one strategy that “no doubt contributes to world-class performance in Estonia,Finland and a number of east Asian countries”.
“The world’s top-performing school systems do not expect teachers alone to address the diversity of students’ needs. Instead,they have system-wide strategies for better targeting teaching on individuals and their progress,” he said.
Federal Education Minister Jason Clare said the Grattan report “contains some ideas about the sort of reforms ... to boost student outcomes – particularly for those from a disadvantaged background”.
He said government funding needed to be “tied to reforms that will make a real,practical difference”.
showing 90,000 students did not meet minimum standards for reading or numeracy and called on governments to commit to firm targets to lift students’ results.