Do we spend enough on

education?

There are more comments about the NAPLAN test results in the state newspaper this morning.  The general view seems to be that simply "throwing more money" at the school system is not the answer.

It isn't of course. Class sizes are half what they were when I was a mere kitten at school.  I don't know how big my first class was of course. It is not the sort of thing that many of us could remember. I do however remember my "Grade 4" class. There were forty-six children in that. The following year my "Grade 5" class was "small". For some reason it was a girls only class - all thirty-six of us. The family then went back to much smaller classes in rural schools but they were still larger than many city schools are now. 

Eventually I returned to the city and went to an all girls high school where I was the fifty-third girl in the class. Until I left school classes were not much smaller than that. We were crammed into rooms in four rows facing the blackboard. There was no room to rearrange the desks.

Somehow we managed to learn in this environment. Not only did we learn but we reached a standard which is without doubt higher than it is now. Yesterday I saw two pieces of work that had been handed in by a "Year 10" student. Her mother was delighted with it because of the very positive remarks the teacher had made. I made the necessary polite comments but, if I had handed that work in, it would have been passed back to me with very different comments.  What also disturbed me was the fact this girl is going to a school which still believes spelling and grammar matter. She is also considered to be "bright" and "hardworking" according to her school reports.

I don't know what is going on. Although I have had contact with girls (and even some boys) at secondary level I have not spent much time in their classrooms. I have the impression things are very different now. It must be when there are only about twenty-four students in most classrooms, often less in the first few years.

According to someone I know in Japanese educational administration class sizes in Japan are around forty students each. Still most students seem to learn to read and write their own language - and it takes longer hours and more effort to become proficient in Japanese.  Yes, it seems the discipline there is stricter and expectations are much higher. 

"Throwing money at the problem" and "reducing class sizes" has not worked. I suspect the unpalatable truth is that there needs to be a much greater degree of discipline - at home as well as at school - and our expectations of students need to be much higher.