Our schools abound in under-achievement

About two in five students do not meet the Australian national proficiency standard in reading or maths by the time they are 15, according to the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which tests knowledge and skills essential for work and life.

In a typical secondary school in Australia, students in year 9 can be working at the equivalent of seven different grade levels, sometimes more. This presents a tremendous challenge to teachers – it is nearly impossible to help a year 9 student write a complex essay analysing Macbeth when he or she is still struggling to read fluently or compose clear sentences.

When students fall well behind their peers, it can be hard to catch up. Successful academic learning involves the layering up of new knowledge and skills on a solid foundation. If there are too many gaps in the foundation, the fragile structure struggles to hold the weight of new learning.

The burden of underachievement is borne disproportionately by disadvantaged students. A Grattan Institute analysis of 2022 NAPLAN data shows the learning gap more than doubles in reading and numeracy between year 3 and year 9.

In reading, for example, students in year 3 whose parents did not finish school were two years and five months behind those whose parents had a university degree. By year 9, this learning gap grows to the equivalent of more than five years.

The good news is that the opportunity to boost learning and bridge these gaps is in plain sight. Small-group tuition – in which educators work with just a few students at a time in short, highly focused sessions about three times a week over one or two school terms – can add, on average, an extra four months of learning over a year.

But embedding effective small-group tuition in all schools will take time and effort to get right. Not all small-group tuition works, and it can be resource-intensive.

We should persist, for two key reasons.

First, filling learning gaps is the right thing to do: it changes young people’s lives. Struggling students tend to fall further behind, with real-life consequences. People with poor educational results tend to miss out on a broader set of social opportunities and have fewer options in study and work. A good school education helps young people stand on their own two feet as adults, and the benefits ripple through future generations.

Second, the economic benefits of improved learning far outweigh the costs of effective small-group tuition. Students who do well at school tend to go on to earn more later on.

Studies estimate that for each additional year of schooling completed, future income rises by about 10 per cent. New Grattan Institute analysis shows that if one in five students received small-group tuition in 2023, they would collectively earn an extra $6 billion over their lifetimes – about six times the annual cost of tutoring programs.

Five-year plan

Helping struggling students catch up and keep up is in everyone’s interest. Prevention and early identification of learning gaps pay off. Grattan Institute’s new report, Tackling under-achievement: Why Australia should embed high-quality small-group tuition in schools, calls on governments to commit to a five-year plan to embed effective small-group tuition in every school.

Governments should seize the opportunity to learn and build on the lessons from the $1.5 billion investment in small-group tuition programs in NSW, Victoria and elsewhere across Australia, in response to the COVID-lockdown disruption to schooling.

Australia now needs a transition path to embed best-practice small-group tuition around the country, beyond the emergency pandemic response.

Robust international research shows that small-group tuition is an effective strategy for struggling students, but more research and testing is needed to identify the most cost-effective approaches, the most promising small-group literacy and numeracy interventions, the training and support that different types of tutors need and how to harness the untapped potential of technology to improve educational access and outcomes.

Australia’s governments should invest $10 million in research to investigate these issues and provide clearer guidance and support to schools.

To ensure this work gets done, federal Education Minister Jason Clare should ask the state and territory governments to commit to embedding effective small-group tuition in the next National Schools Reform Agreement (NSRA), which is being negotiated now.

Australia’s education ministers must seize this opportunity to tackle the shocking levels of underachievement in our schools.