“Doom and gloom” explanations for educational inequity in Australia lack evidence and take policy attention away from “substantiated drivers of inequity”, a new report by Catholic Schools NSW says. Source: The Australian.
By global standards, Australia’s school system is actually “highly equitable”, the report Data, Not Drama states, attributing inequity largely to declining student attendance among disadvantaged cohorts.
CSNSW also noted Australia’s immigrant school students get higher PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) scores than non-immigrants before and after accounting for socio-economic status, and lead only a few countries where immigrants outscore non-immigrants.
As the NSW Council of Deans of Education and state Education Minister Prue Car meet today for the Equity in Education: From Policy to Playground conference, CSNSW chief executive Dallas McInerney says “the ‘evidence-light’ narrative that the Australian school system is an equity wasteland” is a “disservice”.
Referring to segregation as a “red-herring”, the CSNSW report states that while Australia is above-average in segregation, based on OECD data, it is also above-average in equity – “demonstrating the lack of an association between the two in Australian schools”.
The report also says there is “no association” between equity and the share of students attending non-government schools, based on OCED PISA data.
“Australia (36 per cent) has more than double the share of non-government school students than the OECD average (16 per cent), yet is above-average in equity,” the report says.
“Conversely, New Zealand has fewer than 6 per cent of its students attending non-government schools, yet is below-average in equity.”
CSNSW also argued that OECD analysis stated that “for rich countries already investing heavily in education, there is little evidence that additional funding improves student performance”.
CSNSW blamed inequity on poor student attendance rates.
Australian Secondary Principals Association chief executive Andy Mison said school funding and increasing segregation were the biggest issues facing education.
FULL STORY
Catholic schools counter ‘doom and gloom’ narrative on school inequity (By Joanna Panagopoulos, The Australian)
