Australia ranked a lowly 70th out of 77 participating nations in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s 2018 index of disciplinary climate,released on Wednesday.
The index is based on an international survey of 600,000 15-year-old students’ views about the level of discipline in the classroom,with a high proportion of Australian students reporting that the teacher is not listened to and it regularly takes a long time for the class to quieten down.
The only countries that fared worse than Australia for classroom unruliness were Belgium,the Philippines,Spain,Greece,France,Brazil and Argentina.
South Korean students were the best-behaved on the index,followed by Kazakhstan,Albania,China and Japan.
The index is part of the OECD’s triennial Programme for International Student Assessment,in which Australia also recorded its worst results in reading,maths and science.
For most countries,classroom discipline improved between 2009 and 2018,the OECD report said.
But Australia was one of a minority of countries where it deteriorated,with a higher proportion of students reporting that the teacher has to wait a long time for students to settle down,that students cannot work well and that they don’t start learning for a long time after the lesson begins.
The results also revealed a gender split,with all-girl classes and mixed classes that were more than 60 per cent girls reporting better discipline than all-boy classes or classes with more than 60 per cent boys.