Unveiling the Crisis: The Shocking Truth Behind Australia's Education Decline

Strong evidence for one of the main reasons behind the decline of Australian education has been exposed this week.

The benchmarking analysis released by Learning First chief executive Ben Jensen has laid bare the inadequacy of our science curriculum compared to others around the world.

This is an analysis the government should have done, and now we know why it hasn’t.

The report shows that by the time Australian students finish Year 8, they will have been provided less than half the science content than the average of these other jurisdictions including Canada, England, Japan, Singapore and the United States.

In physics, our curriculum has 56 per cent less content and in biology, almost 70 per cent less content.

So much for the ‘clever country’.

I attended dinner with some business leaders last night and asked what their priority was for the government to address – and almost all of them nominated improving education standards and outcomes.

In addition to fixing the glaring shortfalls in the national curriculum, we also need better trained and better supported teachers.

They also need more comprehensive training and support in the face of rising discipline issues in classrooms and increasing school ‘refusal’.

We used to have dedicated teacher colleges in Australia, but since this was transferred to universities the decline in education outcomes and standards have followed suit.

And as we’ve seen last week, some teachers are more interested in recruiting activists among their students and indoctrinating them in radical causes.

They’re teaching kids what to think, not how to think.

Let’s get back to basics and teach kids what they need to know.