An international assessment of Victorian high school students has revealed a significant increase in the number of students performing at high levels in reading along with a drop in student performance in mathematics.
The Minister for Education, James Merlino announced the results of the the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) which assesses 15-year-old students from around the world in reading, science and maths, every three years.
Mr Merlino said the PISA results had shown the proportion of Victorian high performers in the top two proficiency levels in reading jumped 40 per cent since the previous report in 2015 – from 10 per cent to 14 per cent.
“We have put significant effort into boosting literacy results over recent years and this is vindication for all of that hard work,” Mr Merlino said.
“But there’s clearly more work to do in mathematics,” he said.
He said the report revealed student performance in maths had declined across Australia and the world, but that Victoria had still outperformed the majority of other Australian jurisdictions and had the lowest level of decline of all states and territories.
Mr Merlino called for an immediate review of the national maths curriculum and said that if it was not agreed to Victoria would start its own review of the Victorian maths curriculum.
“The bottom line is that we have too many out-of-field teachers in the maths area – that’s something we need to change.”
Mr Merlino said that at the next Education Council meeting he would raise the need for university courses to include pre-requisites, particularly in maths, and to be better communicated to prospective students.
