CHCPRP003 Reflect On Early Childhood Issues Or Practice - Assignment Solution

Primary Education in Australia

Through education we create new leaders, scientists, doctors, engineers, businessmen, financial analyst and quality education can secure the future of the country. Children start their schooling journey from their primary education, Australia ranked 35th in the OECD (organization for economic cooperation and development) countries in pre-school attendance out of only 40. Australian children are said to be lagging behind in comparison to other countries. (Press, 2018)

The article “Report revealing Australia's educational decline a 'real worry', says Birmingham” published on 25th February, 2018 reveals the facts behind the lagging of pre-school students in recent times. The article states that 3 of 4 students do not meet minimum standards of mathematics, 1 in 4 students lag in science and even 1 out of 5 children are not at the required reading level. Simon Birmingham, education minister, said “If a child is behind by year 3 in terms of developing basic skills, it’s really hard for them to catch up.” Although 15 year old Australian are doing well in comparison to other countries, one of 5 of them also lag in mathematics, reading and science standards. Apart from the direct results of the students, the Aracy report shows that the children immunization rates are falling and they are more prone to mental illnesses now. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population is a bigger victim of these low immunization rates. Mr. Birmingham has stated that his administration will not sit back while the education system suffers instead he intends to work to eradicate such problems from the education system, especially focusing on the early education of students. 

Analysis of the article

Looking at the report the most alarming concern is the primary student’s results and the fact that they are falling below minimum standards. As it is said that education is a passport for future and these children carry this passport with them, it is necessary to act quickly and work to get to the root cause of these lags that the children face. Is it because of lack qualified teachers, parents disinterest in children’s education or the curriculum? All these possibilities are to be tested in order to firstly find the problem and then eradicate it. In 2004 it was recorded that Australia invested only 0.1% of the GDP in primary education while the average investment in primary education amongst the member countries of OECD was 0.5% of GDP. The variability of the standards of pre-school education has been recognized to be one of the major factors in the results we see today (Harrington, 2008). Although these problems have been catered for by increasing the percentage of GDP invested in the primary education sector, there is a lot of concerns still in this sector. As of 2017 Australia ranks 4th amongst the OECD countries in the list of public expenditure on preschools (Kate Torii, 2017). This shows the importance Australia has given to the preschool education sector. The main problem of primary education still remains to be the lag that students face that can be very difficult to cover in the later years. There are several possible problems that could be the cause of this including:

• Variability in the standards of education around the country
• Lack of qualified teachers 

A study shows that half of the teachers teaching in early childhood schools have a bachelor’s degree and one-third are still working towards one out of which many are expected to drop out which would create a potential problem of large number of unqualified teachers. (O'Connell, 2019)

• Mental illnesses including some kind of deficiency and hence the lack of facility to discover such illnesses

To get to the real problems the education Minister requires to carry out a research that would provide facts against these hypotheses. Without knowing the cause efforts may be made to a lost cause. 

Resources 

The education ministry is directly responsible to solve such problems but can seek help from other networks that could help gather data regarding the problem and seek experience based solutions. As stated in the article Mr. Birmingham, the then education minister, called upon a business man’s, David Gonski, panel to learn how to effectively spend in the education sector. The following could help solve the preschool student’s problems: 

• The government itself
• The OECD could be used to extract relevant data
• Teacher training through professors that have experience in the field 
• Social media awareness campaigns for parents and for teachers
• Annual evaluations through data centers