Latest / The You Project / #1642 Is Aussie Education Broken? - David Gillespie

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#1642 Is Aussie Education Broken? - David Gillespie · The You Project

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: I get our kids. It's Craig Anthony Harp. It's David
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Andrew Gillespie aka Dag. It's Tiffany and cook a tack.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: We'll start with the pugilist up in the top left
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: corner on my screen. Anyway, Hello Cookie.
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: Hello Harper. You're right, always, always fabulous or not always
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: sometimes a bit wingy.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: Sometimes sometimes you're a fucking nightmare. And sometimes sometimes you
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: send me text messages and I'm like, all right, all right,
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: I'm going to answer that in four hours or maybe tomorrow.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: I'm going to respond to that. Either that or you're
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: sending me photos of cat's peg to fucking washing lines
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: or something, or oh look, baby, a tiny miniature hippo.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: I want one. I'm like, you're probably not going to
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: get one.
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: How good are animal memes?
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: Though?
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: Annoying? Uless b We've asked you this before, but you're
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: a kind of a dog person. You have a dog
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: in your family, don't you too.
• 1:04
  Speaker 4: At the moment, actually, because we're looking after one that
• 1:07
  Speaker 4: my eldest daughter has acquired because she's a teacher, well
• 1:12
  Speaker 4: becoming a teacher, and we'll be going into a country
• 1:15
  Speaker 4: posting next. Y and wants to take a dog with her.
• 1:17
  Speaker 4: So she's while she's out in country postings this year
• 1:22
  Speaker 4: in her prack, she's given us her dog to look after.
• 1:24
  Speaker 4: So now we've got two of them.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: Oh wow, and are you? Are you a gushy, cuddly,
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: lie on the floor dog person or are you just
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: a pat on the head tolerate them from afar?
• 1:36
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that second one's probably closer.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm shocked. I'm shocked because you're so warm and fuzzy.
• 1:46
  Speaker 4: I walk them every morning, though, both of them in
• 1:48
  Speaker 4: the bush.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: Oh really, do you live in the bush or near
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  Speaker 1: the bush.
• 1:52
  Speaker 4: There's a bush land across the road from us. Yeah,
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  Speaker 4: Whi's quite a big lump of bush that the dogs
• 1:58
  Speaker 4: like to walk in.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: Are there any snakes there?
• 2:01
  Speaker 4: Probably, but I've never encounted them. They probably don't want
• 2:03
  Speaker 4: to hang around and find out what dogs are like.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: That's that's yeah. I wonder if dogs are scared. I
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: think dogs are scared of snakes, aren't they? Or maybe
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: some are summer anyway, this is not very captivating. People like, fuck,
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: get on with it out there?
• 2:22
  Speaker 4: So why didn't he cut that bed out?
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah? Take that outif I we'll leave it in.
• 2:27
  Speaker 4: Fuck.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: It, so I wanted to have a chat to you.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: I've had a few conversations lately and with a reoccurring theme,
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: which is education, and I just had one at the
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: gym tonight which I left the gym twenty minutes ago
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: and a friend of mine, Nigel, shout out to Nige
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: and MJ. They owned some childcare centers, kindergarten's, early learning centers,
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: whatever you want to call them. I think they're a
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: little bit of an amalgamation. But he was talking to
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: me about some of the challenges of getting you know,
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: getting people in the space who are well qualified and
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: good to do the job. How's the state of the
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: Australian education system at the moment in your eyes? I
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: know that you have free free school dot org are
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: you so if you're interested in having a look at
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: that everyone, I've looked for a little bit, but I've
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: been on there quite a few times and it's amazing.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: Free school one word, free school dot org dot au,
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: which is an amazing resource that David and a bunch
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: of other people have created at no cost to Australian students.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: But what's your current what's your hot take on education
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: at the moment?
• 3:36
  Speaker 4: David, it's never been worse. So the Australian education system
• 3:42
  Speaker 4: on any benchmark, any benchmark, has never ever been worse,
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  Speaker 4: and it is not improving and has shown no signs
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  Speaker 4: of improving since we've been accurately measuring it since about
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  Speaker 4: two thousand. It's been on a continuous do Ownwood trajectory.
• 4:02
  Speaker 4: So the big question a lot of people ask is why,
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  Speaker 4: And the answer is a lot simpler than most people
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  Speaker 4: would tell you, which is that we've inserted for profit
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  Speaker 4: organizations into the delivery of education in this country and
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  Speaker 4: have essentially proven that doing so rex education systems. So
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  Speaker 4: what I mean by that is what most Australians call
• 4:31
  Speaker 4: private schools, which are not private schools. They receive just
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  Speaker 4: as much government funding as so called government schools, but
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  Speaker 4: they also have the right to charge fees, and inserting
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  Speaker 4: those into the education system has wrecked the one thing
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  Speaker 4: that makes education systems work, and that's equity. Education is
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  Speaker 4: a public good, meaning its purpose beyond the individual purpose.
• 5:04
  Speaker 4: The individual purposes, I guess you've learned stuff, but from
• 5:07
  Speaker 4: a society's perspective, its purpose is to raise all boats.
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  Speaker 4: Societies with where most people are educated do better than
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  Speaker 4: societies where most people aren't. It's a pretty obvious thing
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  Speaker 4: to say, but for some reason people forget it. And
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  Speaker 4: so the education system is not charity, it's not a gift.
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  Speaker 4: It's something designed to increase the capability of the population.
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  Speaker 4: So it's a public good. And as soon as you
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  Speaker 4: insert into that competitive pressures with private organizations, what tends
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  Speaker 4: to happen is that those organizations spend a lot of
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  Speaker 4: their money competing with each other and with the public
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  Speaker 4: system for the students that they know will do well.
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  Speaker 4: Why do they want the students who they know who
• 6:00
  Speaker 4: will do well because it's great for marketing, which is
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  Speaker 4: coming back to the start. Why do they want it
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  Speaker 4: to be good for their marketing Because they've got to
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  Speaker 4: compete with each other and with the public system. And
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  Speaker 4: so you push an education system away from its primary purpose,
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  Speaker 4: which is to take all comers and turn them into
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  Speaker 4: better or more educated people, and divert massive resources towards
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  Speaker 4: internal competition and fighting over the kids who will do well.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: Anyway, Yes, yes, have there been private schools around though
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: forever haven't.
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  Speaker 4: They There's always been private school Every major education system
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  Speaker 4: has private schools, but they have actual private schools So
• 6:42
  Speaker 4: if you look at say an education system like the
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  Speaker 4: United States or the United Kingdom, which are close models
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  Speaker 4: for US, they have about six percent of their schools
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  Speaker 4: are private, and they are truly private. They are not
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  Speaker 4: subsidized in any way by government. In the United States,
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  Speaker 4: it's prohibited because the government can't get involved in funding
• 7:03
  Speaker 4: religious institutions. And in the United Kingdom it's just a
• 7:06
  Speaker 4: matter of policy. They did used to be funded by
• 7:11
  Speaker 4: governments or assisted by governments, and they decided they weren't
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  Speaker 4: going to do that anymore. And so in both cases
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  Speaker 4: about six percent are fully privately funded. So in those systems,
• 7:22
  Speaker 4: what people say is, well, you've got a choice. You
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  Speaker 4: can be publicly funded and go to a public school,
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  Speaker 4: which is ninety four percent of the schools, or you
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  Speaker 4: can opt out and pay your own freight. And that's
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  Speaker 4: pretty much the way it is in most of the world.
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  Speaker 4: And that percentage of about six percent, So there are
• 7:38
  Speaker 4: about six percent of the population who say, you know what,
• 7:41
  Speaker 4: I don't want my kid in a public system. I'm
• 7:43
  Speaker 4: prepared to pay for them to be educated privately, so
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  Speaker 4: I'm opting out. And they don't expect government money to
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  Speaker 4: assist them, and they don't get it. In Australia, it's very,
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  Speaker 4: very different. In Australia, it's about thirty five to thirty
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  Speaker 4: seven percent of the system are so called private schools.
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  Speaker 4: So why is it so much bigger Because in Australia
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  Speaker 4: you can opt out of the government schools and still
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  Speaker 4: collect all the money you would have received had your
• 8:10
  Speaker 4: child attended a government school, So you're not really opting out.
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  Speaker 4: You're getting the same money as if your child still
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  Speaker 4: attended government school and you're being charged fees. So Australia
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  Speaker 4: is unique in the world in that sense in that
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  Speaker 4: we contribute huge amounts of public money and the figures
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  Speaker 4: here are truly mind blowing. You know, there are many,
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  Speaker 4: many billions of dollars of public money to private enterprises
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  Speaker 4: to run a schooling system that would be run cheaper
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  Speaker 4: and better where it's simply run as a government system
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  Speaker 4: like it is in every other country in the world. Now,
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  Speaker 4: the problem with that is that we're wasting billions filling
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  Speaker 4: the pockets of for profit organizations. Now people often say
• 9:01
  Speaker 4: to me, oh, yeah, but the local Catholics not a
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  Speaker 4: for profit organization, and you know they're not reporting profits
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  Speaker 4: from their schools. Well, there's profit and there's profit. There's
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  Speaker 4: the profit you get when you have a corporation and
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  Speaker 4: you pay dividends, and that's a profit. But there's other
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  Speaker 4: kinds of profit. I mean, I guarantee you the head
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  Speaker 4: master at the local Anglican college is being paid probably five, six,
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  Speaker 4: seven times as much as the head master at the
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  Speaker 4: state school next door to end. So that's a profit.
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  Speaker 4: You know. Putting in you know, saunas and Olympic swimming
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  Speaker 4: pools and equestrian centers is profit. So none of it
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  Speaker 4: improves the outcomes from an education perspective, but it does
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  Speaker 4: improve the marketability of the school. So the problem we've
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  Speaker 4: got in Australia is that when we decided to do this,
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  Speaker 4: and this is a relatively recent thing that we've done
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  Speaker 4: in Australia. So until nineteen sixty two, no Australian pri
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  Speaker 4: at school received government money, not a cent, not a
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  Speaker 4: single cent. In nineteen sixty two they started giving private schools,
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  Speaker 4: church schools government money. Now why hadn't it been done
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  Speaker 4: before that, because one hundred years earlier, at the start
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  Speaker 4: of our education system, we'd made a decision collectively not
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  Speaker 4: to give money to church schools. Rather like the United
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  Speaker 4: States has today, and every politician since then had decided
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  Speaker 4: it was too much of a political risk to risk
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  Speaker 4: giving money back to the churches until nineteen sixty two
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  Speaker 4: when the Catholics said, we are so broke, we are
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  Speaker 4: going under and we are going to flood your school
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  Speaker 4: systems with all of our kids, and the government's cave
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  Speaker 4: to it and started handing the money. So that was
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  Speaker 4: the start of it, and it took us down a
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  Speaker 4: path that no other country in the world had gone down.
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  Speaker 4: And at the time people said this is bad news.
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  Speaker 4: This will destroy equity in the education system, it will
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  Speaker 4: destroy our educational performance. It turns out, though we're right,
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  Speaker 4: that was our high point in terms of educational performance.
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  Speaker 4: It's been downhill ever since.
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  Speaker 1: Where does Australia rank in the world academically, Tiff, can
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: you look that up? Like? Where do we? I'm sure
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  Speaker 1: there's a global academic ranking? Or who are the best
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  Speaker 1: students or who get the best?
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  Speaker 4: There are several Probably the most comprehensive one is a
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  Speaker 4: test that's done I think it's every two or four
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  Speaker 4: years and has been published since two thousand. There's been
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  Speaker 4: ones that have been done before that. There was a
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  Speaker 4: maths and science one done before that, depending which measure
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  Speaker 4: you use, Australia was doing really well in about two thousand,
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  Speaker 4: so we were generally coming in about sixth or seventh
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  Speaker 4: in the OECD, which is not bad. And now where
• 12:02
  Speaker 4: we've plummeted, I think it's around twelve thirteenth, fourteenth something
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  Speaker 4: like that in the OECD. So it's been a downward trajectory,
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  Speaker 4: you know, pretty much since we started measuring things. And
• 12:16
  Speaker 4: if you ask, well, well, who is the best, it's
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  Speaker 4: generally in those measures at the moment it's coming in
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  Speaker 4: around China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea tend to outperform everybody.
• 12:31
  Speaker 4: And not only they outperforming everybody, they're doing better than
• 12:34
  Speaker 4: even they were in the previous year's tests. So and
• 12:38
  Speaker 4: Australia you could say, oh, well, maybe there's something, you know,
• 12:42
  Speaker 4: some reason for that. Maybe it's the way, maybe it's
• 12:44
  Speaker 4: a cultural thing, maybe it's you know, whatever it is,
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  Speaker 4: but it doesn't cut it, because our results are worse
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  Speaker 4: when we only compare it to ourselves rather than just
• 12:55
  Speaker 4: comparing it to everybody else. Like the average fifteen year
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  Speaker 4: old in Australia is now a year and a half
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  Speaker 4: behind where the average fifteen year old was in the
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  Speaker 4: year two thousand.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: So hang on, that is so that's in twenty four years,
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: they're a year and a half. So developmentally, you mean.
• 13:16
  Speaker 4: From the tests, from the test, So these are maths, writing,
• 13:19
  Speaker 4: you know, science tests.
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  Speaker 1: Comprehension, blah blah blah wow.
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  Speaker 4: Because these tests are standardized on fifteen year olds, right,
• 13:25
  Speaker 4: so that they are givenm to a cohort of fifteen
• 13:28
  Speaker 4: year olds every time they do it, and they and
• 13:30
  Speaker 4: it's meant to measure the same things over and over
• 13:32
  Speaker 4: and over again. So so I think it's less interesting
• 13:36
  Speaker 4: to compare ourselves to other countries and more interesting to
• 13:39
  Speaker 4: compare ourselves to ourselves. And that's not good news.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: How'd you go, Chiff?
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: When I put in one?
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: Now my browsers, Now now you're looking at shot shoes.
• 13:52
  Speaker 4: And looking and cat memes. Ah, here we go.
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: I when I plugged in where there's Australian rank in education,
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: it says Australia's education ranking varies depending on the criteria used.
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: According to UNICEF, Australia ranks thirty nine out of forty one,
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: high in middle class income countries achieving quality education. But
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: then it says our world class universities are ranked in
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: the world's best and the country is second in the
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: OECD for education and educational outcomes. In terms of student performance,
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: Australian fifteen year old's rank ninth in the world for
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: reading and science and tenth for maths.
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I doubt that ninth and really I don't know.
• 14:41
  Speaker 4: I mean it depends, it depends what year you're looking at.
• 14:44
  Speaker 4: So it's a moving target. But the consistent message that
• 14:51
  Speaker 4: has been coming through is that it has never gotten better.
• 14:55
  Speaker 4: It's been getting worse and worse and worse. And sure
• 14:59
  Speaker 4: we'll come in off a high base compared to many
• 15:01
  Speaker 4: many other countries. I mean, we had and still do
• 15:05
  Speaker 4: have a high quality education system in world terms. It's
• 15:10
  Speaker 4: just going backwards very very quickly. The other thing that
• 15:17
  Speaker 4: is worth mentioning about it is that as part of
• 15:20
  Speaker 4: those tests they do something called an equity measure, which
• 15:23
  Speaker 4: is what is your chance if you are in the
• 15:27
  Speaker 4: bottom quartile by inco So sorry, I should say income
• 15:30
  Speaker 4: is the greatest predictor of performance in the Australian education system.
• 15:35
  Speaker 4: The more money your family has, the more likely you
• 15:37
  Speaker 4: are to do well. So if you want to know
• 15:39
  Speaker 4: whether a child's going to do well. All you need
• 15:41
  Speaker 4: to know really is how wealthy their parents are. And
• 15:45
  Speaker 4: private schools use that as part of their marketing because
• 15:47
  Speaker 4: they flip it and say, well, it's because of us
• 15:51
  Speaker 4: that the wealthy kids are doing well. It's actually the reverse.
• 15:55
  Speaker 4: It's because the wealthy kids go to those schools that
• 15:59
  Speaker 4: those schools look like they're doing well. So wealth it
• 16:04
  Speaker 4: simply gives you more advantage. It gives you more of
• 16:06
  Speaker 4: a head start, it gives you more resources, it gives
• 16:09
  Speaker 4: you more access to better quality teaching. You would know
• 16:12
  Speaker 4: this from sport. There's a cumulative effect in sport. I forgot.
• 16:14
  Speaker 4: It's got a really fancy name, and I.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: Just want it.
• 16:16
  Speaker 4: The Matthew effect. It's where if you are in the
• 16:23
  Speaker 4: so a lot of sports have a birth date bias,
• 16:26
  Speaker 4: right where if the sport age group starts in January,
• 16:31
  Speaker 4: then kids who are born in January do better than
• 16:35
  Speaker 4: kids who are born in December, because when they're a
• 16:37
  Speaker 4: five year old, that's a year's worth a difference. That's
• 16:40
  Speaker 4: going to make a big difference to a five year old.
• 16:42
  Speaker 4: And if you're slightly better when you're a five year old,
• 16:44
  Speaker 4: you get a slightly better coach when you're a six
• 16:46
  Speaker 4: year old, and you get a slightly better coach when
• 16:48
  Speaker 4: you're a seven year old, and you get a coach
• 16:50
  Speaker 4: when you're eight year old, etc. And that effect flows
• 16:52
  Speaker 4: all the way through until you start looking at a
• 16:53
  Speaker 4: professional sports team, say like an AFL team, and you
• 16:57
  Speaker 4: start to notice and this is true. The study has
• 16:59
  Speaker 4: been done that the birthdays cluster around the start point
• 17:04
  Speaker 4: for the age groups in that sport. So if that's
• 17:06
  Speaker 4: a July start date sport, the birthdays are all in
• 17:09
  Speaker 4: July or August. If it's a January start date sport,
• 17:12
  Speaker 4: they're all in January or February, And that's that effect
• 17:16
  Speaker 4: flowing through. And the same thing happens in education, not
• 17:20
  Speaker 4: so much with age, but if you've got a slight
• 17:22
  Speaker 4: advantage at the start, then you are performing slightly better
• 17:26
  Speaker 4: than your peers, and you might get access to better
• 17:28
  Speaker 4: teaching the next year, and then better teaching than a
• 17:31
  Speaker 4: year after that, and then better teaching the year after that.
• 17:34
  Speaker 4: So that effect accumulates and correlates most closely to income.
• 17:40
  Speaker 4: So why does this all matter? Well, they have this
• 17:42
  Speaker 4: equity measure, which says, what are your chances in a
• 17:45
  Speaker 4: given education a good education system, that shouldn't matter. In
• 17:48
  Speaker 4: a good education system, it shouldn't matter how rich you
• 17:51
  Speaker 4: are or how good your parents are, because brilliance or
• 17:54
  Speaker 4: genius is not determined by income. It's determined by genetics.
• 18:00
  Speaker 4: So you know the these They have this measure called
• 18:06
  Speaker 4: an equity measure, which says, if you are in the
• 18:07
  Speaker 4: bottom quartile, so you're the bottom quarter of the population
• 18:10
  Speaker 4: in terms of income, what are your chances of getting
• 18:15
  Speaker 4: to the top quarter of academic performance, so you start
• 18:19
  Speaker 4: at the bottom from an income perspective, what are your
• 18:22
  Speaker 4: chances of getting to the top the high performing education
• 18:25
  Speaker 4: systems in the world, which is you know the ones
• 18:28
  Speaker 4: I said to you before the agent ones. Mostly your
• 18:32
  Speaker 4: chance of getting to the top is seventy five percent,
• 18:35
  Speaker 4: so you have a seventy five percent chance of getting
• 18:38
  Speaker 4: out of the low income trap that keeps your educational
• 18:42
  Speaker 4: performance that low and getting into the high performance academic outcome.
• 18:48
  Speaker 4: In Australia, that percentage is twenty nine percent, so you
• 18:53
  Speaker 4: have a only twenty nine percent chance of escaping your
• 18:57
  Speaker 4: destiny as determined by your income in Australia, which the way,
• 19:00
  Speaker 4: is lower than the OECD average of thirty three percent.
• 19:05
  Speaker 4: So bad education systems don't let you escape your destiny
• 19:11
  Speaker 4: as determined by your income. Good education systems make it irrelevant.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: Wow, I am, I was trying to find I saw
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: some some is it Norway? Finland? Is it one where
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: like they've got a phenomenal education system where every teacher
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: is the minimum qualification is a master's degree for all teachers.
• 19:38
  Speaker 4: And Finland you're talking, you're thinking about right, Yeah, Finland
• 19:45
  Speaker 4: has a system that is entirely, entirely public, So there
• 19:49
  Speaker 4: are no private schools in Finland, and you are sent
• 19:53
  Speaker 4: to your local school, so you don't get a choice
• 19:55
  Speaker 4: about where you go. You go to the school whose
• 19:57
  Speaker 4: geographic area you live in. End of story. So resources
• 20:01
  Speaker 4: are distributed evenly and equitably throughout their education system. And
• 20:06
  Speaker 4: now people bang on about that thing about having a
• 20:08
  Speaker 4: master's degree. That's really just an artifact of the way
• 20:11
  Speaker 4: their tertiary, their university education system works. The studies on
• 20:17
  Speaker 4: degrees and performance in teaching tell us absolutely clearly that
• 20:21
  Speaker 4: it makes absolutely no difference to the performance of a
• 20:24
  Speaker 4: teacher whether they have a master's or not. So don't
• 20:29
  Speaker 4: judge a school on the basis of whether it's teachers
• 20:31
  Speaker 4: have got master's degrees because it makes no difference. What
• 20:34
  Speaker 4: makes a difference is their experience. So how long have
• 20:38
  Speaker 4: they been a teacher? And you want that the answer
• 20:41
  Speaker 4: to that to be preferably more than three years because teaching,
• 20:44
  Speaker 4: like every other job, you're learning on the job in
• 20:47
  Speaker 4: the first three years. But if they've been there longer
• 20:51
  Speaker 4: than three years, then their experience matters much more than
• 20:55
  Speaker 4: any master's degree they could do.
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: So true, so true. Obviously I can't say too much,
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: but I had I had a couple of people work
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: for me early days in my gyms who had PhD,
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: so literally doctors of exercise physiology, and they did not
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: do great because they just couldn't train people. They couldn't
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: they couldn't build connection and rapport, they didn't understand, they
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: didn't have great social or emotional or situational intelligence. You know,
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: one or two were good. But yeah, so that doesn't
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: surprise me that little fact. What about like China and
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: Singapore and the like, who kind of that above average?
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: Is that because culturally there's a big focus on the
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: importance of education.
• 21:47
  Speaker 4: That's that's usually the knee jerk answer people go to.
• 21:50
  Speaker 4: I think that's probably more racist than anything else.
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, how was that racist? I'm saying this much.
• 21:59
  Speaker 4: Everyone's their story about the smart Asian kid in their class.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: You know, I would have thought if I had have
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: said they were dumb, that would be racist. I feel like.
• 22:11
  Speaker 4: A kids Asians, I don't know.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: I feel like that's a positive attribute to say they're smart. Yep,
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: go on.
• 22:18
  Speaker 4: Yeah, but it's also not the explanation. So the explanation
• 22:22
  Speaker 4: is that they have a fundamentally different approach to teaching.
• 22:26
  Speaker 4: And this is really interesting because when you graph the
• 22:31
  Speaker 4: amount of time see Australia, America, the UK have a
• 22:35
  Speaker 4: system that says the best teaching is having a teacher
• 22:38
  Speaker 4: in front of a class all the time. That's where
• 22:42
  Speaker 4: you want to teachers. You want them in front of
• 22:43
  Speaker 4: your classes. And so the average hours in class for
• 22:46
  Speaker 4: a teacher in the UK, the US, Australia are all
• 22:49
  Speaker 4: about the same. It's about twenty five hours a week.
• 22:52
  Speaker 4: So the average secondary school teacher spends about twenty five
• 22:55
  Speaker 4: hours a week standing in front of a class. The
• 22:58
  Speaker 4: average teacher in Singapore or China or Korea spends about
• 23:03
  Speaker 4: half that time standing in front of a class.
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 23:07
  Speaker 4: And the other interesting thing that you want to put
• 23:09
  Speaker 4: up against that is the average size of the class.
• 23:13
  Speaker 4: So the average size of a classroom in Australia is
• 23:17
  Speaker 4: about twenty to twenty two, so there's about twenty to
• 23:20
  Speaker 4: twenty two kids in a class. Now, this is quite different,
• 23:23
  Speaker 4: by the way, to when Australia was performing really really well,
• 23:25
  Speaker 4: which is in the nineteen sixties, when it was about
• 23:28
  Speaker 4: forty was the average in a class. So twenty two
• 23:32
  Speaker 4: in a class in Australia twenty five hours in front
• 23:35
  Speaker 4: of it for the teacher. In Asia, it's about thirteen
• 23:40
  Speaker 4: hours in front of the classroom per week, and the
• 23:43
  Speaker 4: average class size is closer to forty. So the two
• 23:48
  Speaker 4: things that we are constantly told matter in our education
• 23:51
  Speaker 4: system don't apparently matter in the systems that are flogging us.
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: Which is of counterintuitive. Those two those two bits of
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: information or data, they seem yeah.
• 24:07
  Speaker 4: So the big question then is why, what would what do?
• 24:10
  Speaker 4: They can't just be those two things. There must be
• 24:13
  Speaker 4: something different about what they're doing. And the answer is
• 24:18
  Speaker 4: the teachers are not in front of their class because
• 24:22
  Speaker 4: they're observing someone else in front of their class. So
• 24:26
  Speaker 4: they are running as pairs or more than pairs where
• 24:31
  Speaker 4: it's actually two teachers in a classroom. One of them
• 24:34
  Speaker 4: is teaching, the other one is observing them, and maybe
• 24:36
  Speaker 4: there's even a third one they're mentoring them. So they
• 24:39
  Speaker 4: are running as a team and that it is a
• 24:43
  Speaker 4: collegiate approach to teaching, whereas in Australia and the United
• 24:46
  Speaker 4: States the United Kingdom, the approach to teaching is it's
• 24:49
  Speaker 4: your class your classroom. We throw you in there, you
• 24:51
  Speaker 4: teach for an hour, We throw away the key. No
• 24:53
  Speaker 4: one's going to watch you, no one's going to observe you,
• 24:54
  Speaker 4: no one's going to give you any peer instruction, no
• 24:56
  Speaker 4: one's going to give you any mentoring other than the
• 24:59
  Speaker 4: usual to conflict type thing once a year where we
• 25:01
  Speaker 4: say yeah, Bob can still teach. So that's what goes
• 25:07
  Speaker 4: on in Australian English UK classrooms is we tell teachers
• 25:12
  Speaker 4: this is your ship, go run it. In those Asian
• 25:16
  Speaker 4: classrooms there's nothing of the sort going on. It is
• 25:20
  Speaker 4: a very team based thing where there's constant assessment from
• 25:24
  Speaker 4: your peers, constant mentoring from your peers, and you are
• 25:27
  Speaker 4: also delivering it to your peers. So it's a team sport.
• 25:31
  Speaker 4: In Asia and in Australia. It's very much an individual sport.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: So there's somebody who's listening to this.
• 25:39
  Speaker 4: Just now, let me just finish on Sorry, I wanted
• 25:41
  Speaker 4: to finish on the class sized thing. So how do
• 25:44
  Speaker 4: you pay for it? Well, you have twice as many
• 25:47
  Speaker 4: kids in the class?
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes, yeah, well that makes sense. It's I don't know,
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: I'm surprised, but kind of not when you when you
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: explain it. So somebody's listening to this and they've got
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: to put their kid in a school in the next
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: year or two, whether it's primary school or secondary school.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: Have you got any advice for people trying to figure
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: out how to do that in a way which is
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: best for the kid.
• 26:18
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so there's a couple. There's actually quite a long
• 26:21
  Speaker 4: list of things to look for in schools from the outside.
• 26:24
  Speaker 4: So that book that I wrote that the website is
• 26:27
  Speaker 4: based on the Free school The book is called Free
• 26:29
  Speaker 4: Schools and it came out twenty fourteen. It actually has
• 26:32
  Speaker 4: the whole back half of it is a guide to
• 26:36
  Speaker 4: a parent for a parent on what to look for
• 26:39
  Speaker 4: from the outside because schools are hard to judge from
• 26:42
  Speaker 4: the outside because they all kind of look the same
• 26:44
  Speaker 4: and you've got a lot of marketing, particularly if they're
• 26:47
  Speaker 4: asking you to pay for it. And it's so what
• 26:51
  Speaker 4: I've done there is go through all of that and
• 26:54
  Speaker 4: weed out the stuff that doesn't matter, like you know,
• 26:57
  Speaker 4: class sizes and all that sort of thing, and talk
• 27:00
  Speaker 4: about the things that do matter. So there are three
• 27:02
  Speaker 4: things that really really matter in a school. The number
• 27:06
  Speaker 4: one most important thing in a school is none of
• 27:09
  Speaker 4: the things anyone would ever say, but which as soon
• 27:12
  Speaker 4: as I say it, you'll say, of course, which is
• 27:15
  Speaker 4: don't have a principal who is a psychopath?
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: Okay, how do we It's well, the problem with psychopaths,
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: as you know, is they're often intelligent and charismatic and
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: charming and good at job interviews.
• 27:31
  Speaker 4: There's often a really, really good way to tell in
• 27:33
  Speaker 4: a school, which is go and visit them in their office.
• 27:40
  Speaker 4: Psychopaths like are really showing. Their office is their castle.
• 27:47
  Speaker 4: Their office is There's awards all over the walls, there's
• 27:50
  Speaker 4: pictures of them meeting the Prime Minister, there's pictures of
• 27:54
  Speaker 4: them accepting awards. There's all sorts of memorabilia all over
• 27:59
  Speaker 4: the place. It's the most glorious office you've ever seen
• 28:02
  Speaker 4: in your life. You go into a principal's office and
• 28:06
  Speaker 4: it looks like that, turn around and leave. You go
• 28:09
  Speaker 4: into a principal's office where he's got the same desk
• 28:12
  Speaker 4: as everybody else in the school. He's got a stack
• 28:15
  Speaker 4: of papers on it, you know, a third hand, three
• 28:19
  Speaker 4: hundred year old computer sitting on it, and is just
• 28:23
  Speaker 4: you know, getting on with the work. That's the kind
• 28:26
  Speaker 4: of guy you want to be looking at.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: Soor girl or girl or girl? Yes, so now you're
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: getting in trouble and.
• 28:35
  Speaker 4: In and in all primary schools probably it will be
• 28:37
  Speaker 4: a girl. So, which we do about another day, is
• 28:42
  Speaker 4: why is it the primary schools are dominated by a
• 28:44
  Speaker 4: female workforce? We can do that another day.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: But anyway, So, so one is don't don't have a
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: principal who's a psychopath. Yeah, what's two?
• 28:55
  Speaker 4: Two is have us a a staff group that are
• 29:01
  Speaker 4: working on ways even though they are restrained by being
• 29:04
  Speaker 4: in a system that tells them they've got to go
• 29:08
  Speaker 4: into their own classroom and ignore everybody else, but are
• 29:10
  Speaker 4: still trying to even though that's the plan, have some
• 29:15
  Speaker 4: sort of peer mentoring going on in their organization that
• 29:18
  Speaker 4: is more than ticker box stuff. So where they're actually
• 29:21
  Speaker 4: on their own time perhaps or before school or whatever.
• 29:24
  Speaker 4: It is organizing peer mentoring type meetings where they're talking
• 29:29
  Speaker 4: to each other and their leader about how to do
• 29:33
  Speaker 4: their job better. Wow. So that kind of thing happening
• 29:38
  Speaker 4: in a school is a very very very good sign.
• 29:42
  Speaker 4: And then the very last thing is look at the results.
• 29:47
  Speaker 4: And I don't mean the results everyone tells you to
• 29:49
  Speaker 4: look at So everyone says, I can go to my
• 29:51
  Speaker 4: school and you can see this school's got all the
• 29:53
  Speaker 4: green high performing results, etc. All that tells you is
• 29:57
  Speaker 4: that the school has got a lot of rich parents.
• 30:00
  Speaker 4: What you want to look for is progress, and if
• 30:04
  Speaker 4: you have to drill down into it. But on that
• 30:06
  Speaker 4: Naplan website, on the my school website, once you go
• 30:10
  Speaker 4: past all the glitzy front end stuff with all the
• 30:11
  Speaker 4: green things that show that they've got rich parents or not,
• 30:15
  Speaker 4: there is a bit called progress and if you go
• 30:18
  Speaker 4: into that, it produces a beautiful graph that tells you
• 30:21
  Speaker 4: whether the kids in this school do better than kids
• 30:24
  Speaker 4: with the same demographic characteristics. Those are the schools you want.
• 30:30
  Speaker 4: So if you match these kids with the same with
• 30:33
  Speaker 4: kids with the same demographic characteristics all over the country,
• 30:36
  Speaker 4: which is what that does, it's a powerful database and
• 30:39
  Speaker 4: they come out better. That's a school you want because
• 30:43
  Speaker 4: they are beating the odds. They're getting back to that
• 30:46
  Speaker 4: equity thing that I mentioned at the start, where they're
• 30:48
  Speaker 4: improving your chances of success by giving you performance that
• 30:52
  Speaker 4: outstrips what your economics says you should do.
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: Such a fucking interesting chat, this chat, I know nothing
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: about all this stuff. I've just been informed and enlightened.
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: We've got to go. But before we go, well done,
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: you just explain to people quickly, if you would be
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: so gracious, you're honor free school dot org dot au.
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: What is that? Just tell people what that is?
• 31:18
  Speaker 4: So that is a library. So I'll give you a
• 31:20
  Speaker 4: slight bit of background. Sorry, I'll go a little bit
• 31:22
  Speaker 4: longer here than just got it.
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: We've got all the time.
• 31:27
  Speaker 4: So when I was doing the research for the book
• 31:29
  Speaker 4: Free Schools, it became really really clear that there was
• 31:32
  Speaker 4: a type of teaching that worked really effectively with kids
• 31:36
  Speaker 4: who had access to very few resources, very few education
• 31:39
  Speaker 4: and so poor kids in the United States. And what
• 31:42
  Speaker 4: they figured out was that the average teenage kid, I
• 31:45
  Speaker 4: know this is going to come a shock to you,
• 31:47
  Speaker 4: but does not have a very long attention span, and
• 31:51
  Speaker 4: they found that putting them in a class and asking
• 31:53
  Speaker 4: them to concentrate on anything for seventy minutes was just
• 31:55
  Speaker 4: not going to happen. They found out that actual new
• 31:59
  Speaker 4: content delivery in the average high school classroom was less
• 32:02
  Speaker 4: than ten minutes, and the rest of it was you
• 32:05
  Speaker 4: know whatever, practice, padding, chatting, whatever, but the actual delivery
• 32:11
  Speaker 4: was only about ten minutes. And they said, well, why
• 32:13
  Speaker 4: don't we put the ten minutes in an instructional video
• 32:17
  Speaker 4: where we just tell the kids ten minutes worth of
• 32:19
  Speaker 4: what they need to know and then and we get
• 32:22
  Speaker 4: them to watch that before they come to class, and
• 32:24
  Speaker 4: then we spend the seventy minutes in class practicing whatever
• 32:27
  Speaker 4: it is. So that's called flipped classrooms, where you do
• 32:31
  Speaker 4: it that way. You put a video out that the
• 32:33
  Speaker 4: kicker and just watch on their phone or whatever, and
• 32:36
  Speaker 4: they can then come to class and actually practice it. Now,
• 32:40
  Speaker 4: that's a great idea, except you need the videos to
• 32:43
  Speaker 4: be created, and in Australia they just didn't exist so
• 32:47
  Speaker 4: or they were hard to find. So my kids would
• 32:50
  Speaker 4: come home they hadn't understood the math they were supposed
• 32:52
  Speaker 4: to be doing that day in school. They'd get on
• 32:54
  Speaker 4: the YouTube and they'd Google up whatever it was and
• 32:57
  Speaker 4: they'd get some idiot American professor who may or may
• 32:59
  Speaker 4: not be right, teaching them something that may or may
• 33:02
  Speaker 4: not align with the curriculum that they were supposed to
• 33:04
  Speaker 4: be learning right, But that's what they got. So I
• 33:09
  Speaker 4: decided I'd start a charity that addressed that issue, which
• 33:12
  Speaker 4: is get Australian teachers teaching the things they teach every
• 33:16
  Speaker 4: single day in their classrooms, line up their content with
• 33:21
  Speaker 4: the curriculum, make their videos more no more than ten
• 33:24
  Speaker 4: minutes long, and publish them. Free school dot org to
• 33:27
  Speaker 4: you is eight and a half thousand of those videos
• 33:30
  Speaker 4: Australian teachers teaching in alignment with the curriculum. So when
• 33:34
  Speaker 4: your kid doesn't know what on earth it was that
• 33:36
  Speaker 4: the teacher that was standing in front of them that day,
• 33:38
  Speaker 4: because they happened to be the pea teacher filling in
• 33:40
  Speaker 4: for a week, doesn't know what on earth they were
• 33:44
  Speaker 4: supposed to learn, they can go home. They can see
• 33:46
  Speaker 4: ten other teachers from Australia teaching exactly the same content
• 33:50
  Speaker 4: in ten minute bytes. That's what free School is. And
• 33:53
  Speaker 4: there's a new thing we've added to it, which is
• 33:55
  Speaker 4: we've gotten teachers now, well, actually they have. This was
• 33:57
  Speaker 4: their idea to go through the external exams for this
• 34:01
  Speaker 4: is for Queensland for maths. So far, go through all
• 34:04
  Speaker 4: the external exams the past papers, pull out all the
• 34:06
  Speaker 4: past paper questions, line them up by topic, and teach
• 34:12
  Speaker 4: you how to do those problems and work through them
• 34:14
  Speaker 4: with you in a short video. So the kick can
• 34:17
  Speaker 4: go to any particular thing they're supposed to be studying,
• 34:19
  Speaker 4: find a teacher or several teachers showing them how to
• 34:25
  Speaker 4: do those problems which are pretty likely to be on
• 34:27
  Speaker 4: the external paper.
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: It's you never cease to amaze me. Yeah, I don't
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: know how on earth you do all the shit that
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: you do. But it's like I don't know you and
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: I have a love hate relationship, but you do do something.
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: You do do some incredible shit. You are very annoying,
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: but you do do some very good shit. Now you're not.
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: Really that's amazing.
• 34:52
  Speaker 4: Besides, I try to be annoying.
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: No you're not. You're not at all. You just remind
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: me how clever i'm not every time I talk to you.
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: But it's good. He school dot org dot au is
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: that it? Have you got a last final. Yeah, you're done.
• 35:07
  Speaker 4: That'll do us. That'll do us for today.
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: All right, we'll say goodbye affair, Tiff. I want you
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: to jump on tonight and start studying.
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: I was just I was just having a quick squizze
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: at the website. Oh yeah, yeah, there's a photo of
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: David that I never get to see.
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: You know, there's there's four faces behind the organization, and
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: three of them have these incredible professional photos and someone
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: has obviously dug through david archives and found the best
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: that he was.
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: Do you know who? Do you know who? Gilespo's analogous to,
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: like Who's who is? Like Banksy?
• 35:44
  Speaker 4: You know, like artist who? You never know who he is?
• 35:51
  Speaker 4: He's a mystery.
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he's like a fucking enigma and he does all
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: this incredible ship. No one knows what you're like that
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: and if people are thinking, what is Craig talking about?
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: So David's done hundreds of episodes with us, I.
• 36:04
  Speaker 5: Don't know how many, but probably a hundred, and I've
• 36:07
  Speaker 5: never seen his I think I've seen his face once
• 36:10
  Speaker 5: in a photo, but he has his screen black like
• 36:14
  Speaker 5: like he's some fucking covert operative every time.
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: So he gets to see.
• 36:18
  Speaker 4: My hand it's so that I can it's said that
• 36:21
  Speaker 4: I can sub in an AI when on board.
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. The real David's actually out playing golf.
• 36:27
  Speaker 4: That's right, exactly.
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: All right, well say goodbye off heair but for the minute,
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: thanks mate, appreciate you.
• 36:34
  Speaker 4: See you later.