The report said the best systems focused on a relentless, practical focus on learning and teacher education, mentoring and professional development, rather than greater spending.
Western schoolchildren are up to three years behind those in China’s Shanghai and success in Asian education is not just the product of pushy “tiger” parents, an Australian report released Friday said.
Western schoolchildren are up to three years behind those in China’s Shanghai and success in Asian education is not just the product of pushy “tiger” parents, an Australian report released Friday said.
The study by independent think-tank The Grattan Institute said East Asia was the centre of high performance in schools with four of the world’s top systems in the region — Hong Kong, South Korea, Shanghai and Singapore.
“In Shanghai, the average 15-year-old mathematics student is performing at a level two to three years above his or her counterpart in Australia, the USA and Europe,” Grattan’s school education programme director Ben Jensen said.
“That has profound consequences. As economic power is shifting from West to East, high performance in education is too.”
Students in South Korea were a year ahead of those in the US and European Union in reading and seven months ahead of Australian pupils, said the report, using data from the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment.
The PISA, pioneered by the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, has become a standard tool for benchmarking international standards in education.
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