education ?

My youngest boy 16yrs is a bright boy. He has just completed his yr 10 at school . For the past three weeks he hasn`t been going to school.I asked him why he wasn`t he going? Im saying he will be marked absent. He told me and I believe him that he hasn`t had an tutorial class as such for months.
He said that if the teachers held a class where they were going teach him something he would attend.I couldn`t argue with that. What the is going on? Our school teachers have a lot to answer for.
My son and I have been doing some study at home .


Australian students fall behind rest of the world

* Justine Ferrari, Education writer
* From: The Australian
* December 08, 2010 12:00AM



AUSTRALIAN teenagers are falling behind the rest of the world in school because of a drop in academic performance by the nation's top students.

Australia is one of only five countries, and the only high-performing nation, to record a drop in student scores over the past nine years.

OECD testing of 15-year-olds last year show Australian students dropped an average 13 points in reading, equivalent to four months of school. The results confirm a trend that Australia's top students are failing to keep pace with those overseas, with 13 per cent scoring in the top levels compared with 18 per cent in 2000.

Efforts to improve the skills of students at the bottom failed to have any effect, with little change among the lowest scores.

The Program for International Student Assessment, which began in 2000, tested about 470,000 students in 65 countries last year, including 14,000 Australian students in 353 schools.


While Australia's score in reading was still among the top 10 nations, Australian students scored about 33 points behind the top-ranking students in Shanghai, China, which is equivalent to about one year of school.

Shanghai, participating for the first time, outscored the previous world leader, Finland, in all tests, as did Korea. The top five also include Hong Kong and Singapore, participating for the first time.

Australia's average score in maths has also declined significantly over the past six years, falling by 10 points, while the proportion of students in the top two levels fell to 16 per cent from 20 per cent in 2003.

The lower scores put Australia outside the top 10 in maths, ranking alongside New Zealand, Belgium, Germany and Estonia and behind the top five nations as well as Taipei, Finland, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Canada, The Netherlands and Macao.

For the first time, PISA results were reported against the type of school students attended, showing that students in independent schools scored significantly higher than Catholic students, who in turn outperformed government school students.

Students from higher socioeconomic backgrounds, who are more concentrated in independent schools, are as much as three years ahead of the poorest students in government schools.

But the report says that when differences in the education and affluence levels of parents were taken into account, there was no difference in student scores.

PISA is conducted in Australia by the Australian Council for Educational Research, and chief executive Geoff Masters said the gaps between affluent and disadvantaged students, indigenous and non-indigenous, and city and remote students were of great concern. "Some Australian teenagers may be trying to enter the workforce and forge a future for themselves with reading, mathematics and science literacy skills equivalent to a Year 7 or 8 education or worse," he said.