POOR Australian children are less likely to do well at school than disadvantaged children overseas, the architect of the My School website declared yesterday.
Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority chairman Barry McGaw called on governments to do more to "reduce the impact of demography" on school results.
He said any additional taxpayer funding for schools should be reserved for the most disadvantaged schools -- not spent on high-performing private schools.
"We ought to be doing better in reducing the impact of demography," he said.
Professor McGaw -- a former director of education at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development -- said demographics had a stronger influence on educational outcomes in Australia than in the comparable high-performing countries of Canada, Finland, South Korea and Japan.
He said the impact of demographics on education in Australia was greater than the OECD average. "Poorer schools languish and schools in poor communities struggle to a greater extent here (in Australia)," he said.
"It could be the public-private (school) difference but we don't know.
"We've got a socially differential community: poor people live in one area and advantaged in another. Advantaged people by and large can look after themselves and it takes government intervention to help the disadvantaged."
Professor McGaw said educators would learn from the results of the My School website, which received nine million hits in its first 24 hours, to ensure that poorly performing disadvantaged schools could learn from other poor schools that were doing well.
"We ought to use the evidence from the My School website to identify schools working with disadvantaged kids who are performing badly, and help them to adopt the practice of schools with disadvantaged kids who are performing well," he said.
Education Minister Julia Gillard yesterday insisted poor children could get a "fantastic education", as some schools in disadvantaged communities were delivering good results "against the odds".
"A poor child can get a fantastic education and fantastic results," Ms Gillard said. "They need an extra helping hand to do so and we are going to be there with that."
Ms Gillard said the Rudd government would pour more than $2 billion of resources into disadvantaged schools to improve literacy, numeracy and teacher quality. "We are ready to go now and (the resources) will be rolled out in schools," she said.
"We are making up for 12 years of Liberal neglect. We are determined to make a difference."
I see eye to eye with their points of view which stated in the article above. Government should concentrated on those disadvantaged school as everyone has the right to deserve the same level of education. Basic literacy and numeracy are important for students nowadays for they will be left behind without any knowledge. Poor performing students should be guided with full patient especially by teachers to help them do well in later time. Every teens is the asset of a country, so government ought to provide them the best education for the country will get the fruition in the future.
