School funding levels are no guarantee of good student results, a report to be released today reveals.
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A Grattan Institute report, to be issued today, shows Korea spent less than Australia on students but performed better in a range of subjects.
Nor do smaller class sizes guarantee good educational outcomes; teachers in Shanghai spent 10-12 hours directly teaching their students each week, working with an average class size of 40 students.
In Australia, with average class sizes of 23 students, and an average 20 hours of teacher time spent with students each week, students were between one to two years behind Shanghai students in reading and science, and more than two years behind them in mathematics.
Between 2000 and 2008, average expenditure per student rose by 34 per cent across the OECD, and by 44 per cent in Australia.
But by 2009, Australian students' performance had fallen by the equivalent of three months compared with 2000 results. During the same period Korean students had increased their scores by more than three months.
The report shows Australian children's performance has slipped since 2000, with maths students more than two years behind children in Shanghai, and one to two years behind school children in Hong Kong, Singapore and Korea.
Australian students are still ahead of children in the US and Britain and other European Union countries in reading, maths and science, but their results have dropped by 13 points on the OECD's Programme for International Assessment Score.
The report comes on the eve of the release of the biggest review of Australian schools funding in more than 30 years, with the government due to release a review by businessman and academic David Gonski, and its response to his report, on Monday.
Grattan Institute school education program director Ben Jensen said the report showed that the Government-sponsored Gonski review was only part of the solution in addressing schools' performances.
''I don't think it's looking at the wrong thing, I just don't think it's the main game,'' Dr Jensen said. ''Let's look at funding, but let's resolve it quickly and move on to the main game. Funding has dominated Australian education for a decade and we really shouldn't care what school a kid goes to, we should care why their outcomes aren't improving.''
The report found that the key to improving students' results was improving teaching, and the resources put in to teaching.
The successful school systems studied - Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore and Korea - had several philosophies in common. These Asian systems placed great value in the early stages of teacher education. In Singapore, for example, teaching students are paid public servants.
They also provided teachers with mentors and they treated teachers as researchers.
Crucially, they accepted the need for difficult trade-offs, ''so that teachers are paid higher salaries or have more time to do research. Shanghai has higher class sizes so that teachers can pursue research and professional development.''
In contrast, a 2008 survey of Australian teachers showed that 90 per cent believed they would receive no recognition if they improved the quality of their teaching or were more innovative during classes.
Education Minister Peter Garrett was not available for comment last night.