School pupils in Australia spend more time in the classroom under compulsory instruction than in any other country in the OECD, but it will do nothing to help Australia reach the goal of being in the top five performing countries by 2025.
Neither will reducing class sizes, which is just a pointless waste of scarce resources, says Andreas Schleicher, the special adviser on education to the director-general of the OECD.
Dr Schleicher said the goal of being in the top five in international literacy and maths tests by 2025 was “realistic” — Australia is currently ninth out of 34 countries in the OECD — but the single most important factor was improving the quality of teaching. “Our data clearly show that the highest performing countries prioritise the quality of teaching. They are also very good at deploying the very best teachers to the hardest classrooms,” Dr Schleicher said.
He acknowledged the debate about attracting the best into the teaching profession had been raging for years, but said Finland had turned around its mediocre educational standards in the 1960s and 70s to the best in the world by making teaching a high-status profession, like law.
“It’s not just about money — Australian teachers are well paid by international comparisons,” he said.
Source: The Australian – Quality teachers a key factorRelated articles
- Many Australian teachers find national literacy and numeracy plan too difficult to understand (craighill.net)
- Student results ‘could soar’ (theage.com.au)
- The problem with the teacher quality debate (aboutteaching.wordpress.com)
- Teachers in England paid higher salaries than those in most other countries (telegraph.co.uk)
- Leading educational expert Andreas Schleicher to visit New Zealand (national.org.nz)
- Using data to build better education systems: Andreas Schleicher at TEDGlobal 2012 (ted.com)
- UK primary school teachers youngest in OECD (realnewsnow.com)
- Highest Pay, Fewer Hours, Female and English (educationbestpractice.com)
- The plight of Latin America’s teachers (triblive.com)
- Study: US education spending tops global list – MyFox Austin (myfoxaustin.com)
- Teachers in England some of the best paid in the world: They earn more but spend less time in the classroom (dailymail.co.uk)
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Why is it that teachers always get blamed? Teachers have to deal with students of abusive parents, drug addicted parents, drug addicted kids, socially illiterate kids, kids that can assault and abuse teachers and other students and they are just expected to somehow sort out all these problems that are brought into the classroom and prevent teaching from occurring.
Meanwhile, politicians decide what teachers must teach, irrespective of whether students are interested in it or not.
There is nothing wrong with our teachers. Others are much more culpable.
Reblogged this on James' World 2.