Published in The Australian, 12 September 2026
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The latest results in the OECD’s Program of International Student Assessment tests of 15-year-old students around the world in reading, maths and science were released this week. For Australians they made grim reading, highlighting the ongoing decline of school education in this country.
Our students now perform at levels up to two years below what they did more than a decade ago. In the past 20 years the proportion of low-performing students in maths has doubled, with similar trends in reading and science.
It’s worth reflecting on how bad these results are. If you walk into a high school in Australia, on average, one in four students you will meet is low performing in maths. One in five is low performing in reading and science.
What does this mean for Australian society? What future are we providing our children?
Yet I remain optimistic that we can turn these results around and lift Australia into the world’s top tier of education systems. The changes we need to make are clear and they would build on three powerful reforms already sweeping across Australian education.
The first is the widespread adoption of the science of reading as the right way to teach children to read. The second is the adoption of explicit instruction and what has been termed the science of learning, and the third is the broadening networks of teachers and school leaders working together to improve their practice and build a movement of change.
But these vital changes can succeed only if we address the poor state of the Australian Curriculum, which is embedding low performance in schools. Our students performed at a much higher level before the Australian Curriculum was phased in around 15 years ago.
The curriculum is the core of any education system. A teacher can improve their teaching and get some lift in student performance, but if the curriculum is low quality – poorly sequenced, lacking in content, and is vague or ambiguous – then it will always be an anchor preventing growth.
When there are problems in the curriculum, they spread and magnify across the school system. Teachers are expected to teach the content in the curriculum – the Australian Curriculum or its state derivatives. Professional development for teachers and school leaders on how to teach a subject is based on the content of the curriculum of that subject. The programs, textbooks, lesson plans and other resources provided to schools are based on the curriculum.
Conversely, improvements in the curriculum also quickly spread and are magnified across the school system. I’ll explain its importance by examining three crucial areas of student learning: reading, mathematics and science.
Reading
The most important change in Australian education during the past few years has come in how we teach children to read. Across the country, many politicians, education bureaucrats, school leaders and teachers have adopted what has become known as the science of reading.
Why didn’t these changes show up in this week’s PISA results?
First, the results were based on reading comprehension tests of 15-year-old students. The factors that affect reading comprehension of these older students differ from those that affect reading tests in primary school.
Up to about year 4, reading assessments focus on how much students have grasped the fundamentals of how to read. The biggest predictor of performance on these assessments is how well students decode words. Decoding – a major focus of the science of reading – emphasises the use of phonics, which are just one component of the science of reading but often dominate discussion in the so-called reading wars. Recent reforms to improve the science of reading will therefore show up first on tests in primary schools.
As students get older, reading tests focus more on reading comprehension. Students are given text to read and then asked questions to identify how much they comprehend what the text is about.
Importantly, the greatest predictor of success in reading comprehension tests after year 4 is background knowledge: students’ ability to understand a text they read depends on the knowledge and vocabulary they bring to that text.
In a famous research experiment, students in the US were given a reading comprehension test about a text on baseball. Before the test, researchers divided students into four groups: those who knew a lot about baseball, those who didn’t know much, those who had done well on reading tests and those who had not. The results were striking. Students who had not done well on prior reading tests and had been labelled “poor readers” but who knew a lot about baseball scored higher on the test than students who were “good readers” on prior tests but didn’t know much about baseball.
Any piece of text contains both explicit and implicit information. To understand its full meaning, the reader needs to fill in a lot of gaps. Some people can easily comprehend a text about science and engineering because they know the science behind it and can fill in the gaps. Others may more easily comprehend a history text because they bring knowledge of the historical period or of historical patterns of change. This finding about the importance of background knowledge is consistent across research into different subjects.
The key, therefore, to improving students’ reading comprehension after about year 4 is to build their knowledge of many areas of the curriculum: history, geography, music and the performing arts, science, literature and so on. A curriculum that is knowledge-rich supports both learning in each subject and reading comprehension across the entire curriculum.
And this is where we are failing our students.
The Australian Curriculum can’t be described as knowledge-rich or as providing depth in disciplinary learning. Comparisons with curriculums in other countries show that it provides much less breadth and depth of knowledge in subjects. These gaps not only hurt learning in individual subjects but also reduce learning across the board.
Fortunately, change is possible. We are stuck with the current Australian Curriculum only if we choose to be.
The second reason improvements in reading are not yet showing up has to do with implementation of effective reading practice in school systems. Some system leaders and stakeholders still are not on board with the science of reading and believe the reading wars are still alive. Some still tell principals and teachers not to worry: teaching the science of reading is just a fad that will pass. We need more experts in schools and systems leading the way.
In addition, there is simply not enough focus on what students are reading and writing in school. To improve learning, students need to be reading and writing increasingly complex texts across their schooling. Not once a month or once a week but during each school day. Research shows this isn’t happening nearly enough. Many students simply do not have enough opportunities to read and write each day.
In recent years my organisation, Learning First, has surveyed and interviewed more than 30,000 teachers and school leaders across Australia about their curriculum decisions in schools.
Many tell us they struggle with getting the right texts to read and to develop a clear progression in writing in their school. Many teachers also say they are not sure what the right level is – what is high-quality reading and writing for, say, a year 8 student? What is the complexity of the texts they should read? How often? How much should they read? And so on.
These doubts reflect a lack of clarity provided to schools about reading and writing. Some progress has been made in providing recommended reading lists or examples of texts to teach, but there is simply not enough clarity on the reading and writing students should be doing each year of their schooling.
Adding to the problem is that most systems don’t track what or how much reading and writing students are doing. When we work with schools that want to improve the curriculum they teach, we always ask, “What are students reading and writing in, say, year 5 in your school?” Many schools don’t monitor this aspect of learning.
Exploring what students actually read and write offers many opportunities for positive reform.
All these changes are achievable. An increased focus on reading and writing would build on the science of reading reforms that are spreading across the country. Changes to the Australian Curriculum are harder. They require political will.
Mathematics
The mathematics results released this week are terrible but they are the easiest to fix. The Australian mathematics curriculum has fundamental problems. It focuses much less on building foundational maths understanding than do systems that have higher levels of learning and equity than us.
A mathematics curriculum has six strands: number, algebra, measurement, geometry, statistics and probability. Number focuses on whole numbers and operations, fractions, decimals and percentages and is the foundation of learning mathematics.
Without a strong grasp of number, students can’t succeed in upper primary and secondary mathematics, which is why primary mathematics curriculums in leading systems around the world focus on it. In secondary mathematics curriculums, algebra becomes the focus, but students will struggle with algebra without a strong foundation in number.
The Australian mathematics curriculum places less emphasis on number and often teaches its content years later than do leading systems around the world. Our students have less opportunity to learn the foundations of mathematics than do students in other countries.
In the Australian mathematics curriculum, students are expected to progress on average about a quarter less per year in content in number compared with some leading countries.
Accordingly, by the end of primary school, expectations in the Australian Curriculum for learning of number are about two years behind countries such as England and Singapore, which score much higher on international assessments than Australia does.
Instead of focusing on number, the Australian Curriculum focuses more on statistics and probability. In England and Singapore, about a tenth of the mathematics curriculum focuses on statistics and probability. In Australia, it is as much as a fifth of the maths curriculum. This approach simply fails to provide the foundation for effective learning of mathematics.
What’s more, much of the statistics curriculum is repetitive, requiring students to spend time over and again collecting data and making graphs rather than learning the fundamentals of mathematics. Note these repetitions in the Australian Curriculum:
● Year 4: Conduct statistical investigations, collecting data through survey responses and other methods.
●Year 5: Plan and conduct statistical investigations by posing questions … and collecting relevant data.
● Year 6: Plan and conduct statistical investigations by posing and refining questions or identifying a problem and collecting relevant data.
Such repetition takes a lot of class time, while students in other countries are learning number – the foundation of mathematics. It is ridiculous that we have got to this point but it can be fixed. NSW has already made progress addressing these issues.
Importantly, fixing these problems isn’t about cramming more content into the curriculum or saying we have to spend more hours teaching maths. It’s about prioritising what’s most important, getting rid of repetition and making clear progressions in learning to higher levels.
The Foundation – Year 2 years of the Australian mathematics curriculum are being reviewed. I hope improvements will be made. But the problems are largely in years 3 to 6. I implore federal Education Minister Jason Clare to extend the review and fix the entire maths curriculum.
Such a change would magnify the impact of recent improvements in explicit instruction. An evidence-based teaching approach based on cognitive science research that, in short, emphasises the need to be explicit and fully explain the knowledge and concepts being taught in a carefully sequenced way. The focus on explicit instruction is probably the second largest shift in Australian education in the past few years. Thousands of schools and numerous systems have adopted this evidence-based approach.
It’s a great move to get more effective instruction as the norm across Australian education. Much of the research behind explicit instruction focuses on teaching mathematics. If we combine these instructional shifts with an improved curriculum then we can magnify the advances in learning.
Explicit instruction needs to vary in how it is applied in each subject. Such variations take time to develop and master. As explicit instruction becomes embedded across school education it will lift learning in other subjects, too. But we have to get the curriculum right.
Science
In 2023 Learning First published a report benchmarking the Australian science curriculum against leading countries in the world. The results were shocking. In the first nine years of schooling, the Australian science curriculum:
• Contains about half the science content of the average of leading systems.
• Lacks breadth of learning: it covers 44 science topics compared with an average of 74 topics in these other systems.
• Lacks depth of learning: just five science topics are covered in depth compared with an average of 22 topics covered in depth in these other systems.
Similar to mathematics, the Australian science curriculum also contains poor sequencing of content.
Since we undertook this work, NSW and Victoria have both significantly improved their science curriculums, but change needs to go further. Minister Clare has a vital task to overhaul the Australian science curriculum to fix these glaring problems.
The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, the body responsible for the Australian curriculum, ignored our benchmarking. Whenever we compare Australia to the leading nations there are people who dismiss the work and make claims as to why Australia can’t or shouldn’t aspire to be among the world’s best education countries.
I’ve never believed any of this. So, we set about creating a science curriculum where Australian students would learn the equivalent of the science content in the leading systems in the world. We simply do not accept that Australian students should come out with less.
This was not about cramming more and more content in but about fixing problems and creating a clear progression of learning to take students to a higher level.
For example, learning about body systems is an important part of biology. The Australian science curriculum has virtually nothing between year 2 and year 7 on learning about body systems. And then in year 8 there is a huge jump required of students. They must “analyse the relationship between structure and function of cells, tissues and organs in a plant and an animal organ system and explain how these systems enable survival of the individual”.
The curriculum has not properly prepared students to learn this complex knowledge. It is not surprising that students disengage from science when learning is not sequenced properly.
We fixed these problems by building a clear progression of learning across primary school that develops and reinforces knowledge on, for example:
• The musculoskeletal system of humans and other animals.
• The digestive system of humans, other animals and fungi.
• Photosynthesis and the associated structures in plants.
• The reproductive system of humans, other animals and plants.
• The respiratory system of humans and other animals.
• Gas exchange in plants.
• The circulatory system in humans and other animals.
• Transport in plants.
Knowledge is built in a sequenced way, preparing students to learn more complex content in secondary school. This makes teaching and learning easier, and the clearer progression means greater learning is achieved overall. It is incredible how much more students can achieve when sequencing in the curriculum is clear, and the progress expected of students each year is high but achievable.
People regularly assume that lifting the bar to a world-class curriculum means it will be harder to teach, but fixing sequencing problems makes it much easier for teachers and students.
Learning First’s curriculum also contains resources and supports that teachers can use in class. They have been piloted this year in a range of schools, serving more and less advantaged communities. The results and feedback have been outstanding. It is fantastic to see students learning science content equivalent to that taught in leading nations in schools serving disadvantaged Australian communities.
Primary school teachers in Australia often report that they don’t feel confident teaching science. Our resources emphasise teacher development and support; providing the information that enables teachers to effectively teach the curriculum. As one teacher reported, “I never felt confident teaching science but do now.”
We know that we have to improve reading comprehension in Australian schools, so our curriculum contains stories that reinforce the knowledge learnt in science units and build broader reading comprehension. Science instruction teaches children concepts, vocabulary and the ways scientists explain their field. Science stories enable them to meet that knowledge again in rich texts across a range of topics.
So many people told us we can’t lift the bar in Australian schools. All the reasons people said we can’t do it have proven to be untrue.
“You can’t teach it in the time allocated each week in Australian schools.” Not true.
“It won’t work with students in Australian schools.” Not true.
“Australian students don’t want to learn such academically demanding content”. Not true. Students love learning science. “That was the best lesson I’ve ever had.” reported one grade 6 student in one of our pilot schools.
There is a huge demand for improving teaching and learning in schools. We are being contacted by schools around the country to work with them to lift the bar on science. We at Learning First are by no means alone in the pursuit to improve school education. There are so many people and organisations across Australia doing great work with schools. Many system leaders in Australian states have made real changes to improve teaching and learning. Teachers and school leaders around the country are working together as they never have before to improve their teaching and supporting others to improve.
The task now falls on minister Clare to show leadership to fix the problems with the Australian Curriculum and provide the world-class education that all Australians want for our children.
Image credit: Abir Hiranandani