SHOPPING SPREE!!!

Does the Government really need to direct more funding towards education?

Is Australia heading in the right direction in terms of education? Will Australia achieve their goal by 2025? After reading this article, it seats me in a different viewpoint in regards to the increase funding towards education and the structure of our education system.

Before I read this article, I was a strong advocate and supported the raising of funding towards education. However, Australia does supply a substantial amount of funding towards education (2004-05, spent almost $31 billion[1]). But why is our educational outcome decreasing?

It is proven some countries like Finland, who are spending less, are achieving higher results in the standardised tests.

This graph depicts how much twelve countries spend their money on education and if it is effective.

For example, compare Finland and Australia, Finland is spending less than a quarter of what Australia is spending and still manages to achieve top ten in the 2009 PISA.

PISA 2009 statistics

	Australia	Finland
Reading literacy	9	3
Mathematical literacy	15	6
Scientific literacy	10	2

This table illustrates the substantial difference in standardised test results between both countries. Finland is a clear example supporting the lack of need to spend a substantial amount of money for education, but allocating it into the correct places. Australia needs to adopt strategies to improve the quality of education, for example promote quality and expert teaching into schools. During an interview conducted by Steve Austin from the ABC crew, Dr. Juhani Tuovinen, Senior Research Fellow at the Graeme Clark Research Institute in Adelaide lists reasons for Finland’s successful education system. Tuovinren states, Australia must adopt strategies like quality teaching, as they have the power to increase educational outcomes. Ladson- Billings (1995) suggests there has been a decline in the status of the teaching as a profession[1]. However in Finland, teaching is a difficult and prestigious course as rather than employing a mass amount of teachers only ten to fifteen percent of students per year are selected. Students are tested not only academically but also psychologically. For example one key aspect under the conceptions of knowledge, it is a necessity for teachers to be passionate about knowledge and learning[2]. Australia must increase the quality of teaching in order to achieve their goal by 2025.

After the review of the data, education experts have stated, “the system isn’t working”. Dr. Jensen continues on by saying “we are spending in the wrong areas on ‘fads’ such as laptops’ had contributed to the problem. This is a prime example of Australia allocating money in the wrong places, extra funding must be provided to resources like textbooks or initiatives to support expert teaching rather than laptops.

I believe the laptops were the most irrelevant and useless items purchased. During class, students would be watching movies, playing video games and on Facebook whilst the teacher was teaching. It does depend on the teacher’s teaching skill and how effectively they utilize the laptop, but in most cases students use the laptops for all the wrong reasons. Most of my teachers did not have control over our laptop. Teachers gave up on telling students continuously to put their laptops away. My personal memories of my laptop, was only for listening to music and watching movies, nothing to do with education. I was one of the students who only brought their laptop into class to watch movies. Even with the blockage of certain websites, students always manage to find other alternatives (e.g. proxy). Therefore, I believe the laptops did not enhance my education but became a distraction to my education.

Dr. Kevin Donnelly from the Education Standards Institute believes ‘without major changes to the structure of schools, achieving international rankings will not be possible for Australia’. At this rate, Australia will not accomplish their goal. Australia must continue to adopt and implement affective strategies from countries such as Finland, to assist in achieving international rankings.

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[1] Dowling, A., (Dec 2007) Australia’s school funding system, Policy Analysis and Program Education Unit

[2]Ladson- Billings, G. (1995) Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy, 32: 465 DOI: 10.3102/00028312032003465

[3] Ladson- Billings, G. (1995) Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy, 32: 465 DOI: 10.3102/00028312032003465

Media Source:
http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/parenting/australian-children8217s-education-dropping-further-against-world-standards/story-fngqim8m-1226669722037

http://blogs.abc.net.au/queensland/2013/10/why-is-finlands-education-system-so-successful.html