ATAR Notes: Forum
National Education => General National Education Discussion => Topic started by: FatnessFirst on June 21, 2011, 05:27:58 pm
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Hi guys, I'm just wondering what you guys think of the Australian school system. You can compare it with other international schools. Also, it can be about the VCE, or just elementary.
Its for my English Oral btw.
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needs less VCE and more year 9/10 =P.
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Hooray! I'll surely pass at this rate :)
Lol my teacher will probably be like GTFO.
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Private schools get same amount of funding as public schools = government fail.
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We aren't really taught well enough in year nine and ten. Teachers just seem to focus on VCE and not on the earlier years, or thats what has happened during my education. Now that I'm in year 12 this students are 'discplined' by going to a year 12 class. I mean, these annoying brats are sent to annoy us when we are learning? I'm sick of it! :(
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kids don't learn anything in the same method in which you are required to learn in VCE from prep-10. Having done shit all "learning" during these years is what lets them down. Imo it is why you find that kids who are made to learn instruments, certain sports, even cooking, can pick up other subjects a lot faster, because they can actually take in information.
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Hi guys, I'm just wondering what you guys think of the Australian school system. You can compare it with other international schools. Also, it can be about the VCE, or just elementary.
Its for my English Oral btw.
Abroad (Europe and Asia mainly), the kids rocking up to primary school are actually students, as they actually learn and do work that will be beneficial to their education. In my primary school, we were adding improper factions at yr6, while in India (for example), that is like yr1 stuff... Overall, our primary standard is way lower.
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Private schools get same amount of funding as public schools = government fail.
This. It's an outrate. I can assure you if I ever find myself so lazy I become a politician with any power - I would fix this. Private schools are private, they should get $0 of state funds... in fact last I heard anything on this issue private schools got significantly more money.
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Private schools get same amount of funding as public schools = government fail.
This. It's an outrate. I can assure you if I ever find myself so lazy I become a politician with any power - I would fix this. Private schools are private, they should get $0 of state funds... in fact last I heard anything on this issue private schools got significantly more money.
While I agree that private schools should have less funding then government schools, for them to have none is also a bit too far. People who send their kids to private school still pay taxes, and in fact it's the richer proportion of the population that is sending their kids to private schools and therefore probably financing the public schools most without any reward. The situation right now is unbalanced for sure and public should definitely be getting more then private, but neither should private schools be getting nothing.
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IMO, the biggest problem with education here is that we somehow fail to foster fluency in any languages other than english.
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Private schools get same amount of funding as public schools = government fail.
This. It's an outrate. I can assure you if I ever find myself so lazy I become a politician with any power - I would fix this. Private schools are private, they should get $0 of state funds... in fact last I heard anything on this issue private schools got significantly more money.
Private schools should be getting more money than that of public in total (including costs of annual fees by parents). Average public school student is around 10k, private sector probably above that by 3k ish? or more...I can't remember the stats for the private school sector, but its fair. They are paying taxes for the public school sector AND are paying more to gain a better education for their children. Pretty equity to me, and capitalist.
And Prep - Year 10: Force kids to read books.... Everything else...useless!
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Private schools get same amount of funding as public schools = government fail.
This. It's an outrate. I can assure you if I ever find myself so lazy I become a politician with any power - I would fix this. Private schools are private, they should get $0 of state funds... in fact last I heard anything on this issue private schools got significantly more money.
Giving no funding to private schools would just worsen the problem
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IMO, the biggest problem with education here is that we somehow fail to foster fluency in any languages other than english.
YES. YES YES YES.
It's embarrassing how many countries teach their kids to speak pretty much fluent English, and yet the majority of kids here are barely at basic level in a LOTE.
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kids don't learn anything in the same method in which you are required to learn in VCE from prep-10. Having done shit all "learning" during these years is what lets them down. Imo it is why you find that kids who are made to learn instruments, certain sports, even cooking, can pick up other subjects a lot faster, because they can actually take in information.
I agree. When I came here in Australia, We were still doing basic multiplication and division in year 6 when that was work for grade 2 in asia.
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for a different perspective,
compare our student suicide rates to other countries.. i think we do pretty well in that sector
australian schooling = little stress = great
I also don't mind that we're not made to learn a second language...
many immigrants of asian/euro origin can speak a language other than english fluently, and english is a global language, so that's why other countries teach english..
for example, you dont see indians speaking french, lol =D
And i know that in many overseas countries, the education system isn't about applying knowledge or even learning,
It's literally just about how much you can memorise
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I disagree with the language issue. I do agree that given most of us undertake about 9 years of lote, it is pretty disgusting that at the end you can come out knowing next to nothing, but being an English speaking country I do not think it is necessary to learn another language. Other countries generally learn English as it is essentially the world language, yes it may be useful to learn something like French, but even if you do end up moving to a French speaking country (odds are it would be for an international
Organization), knowing french will not benefit you anywhere near as much as someone from France moving to an English speaking coutry. There are so many more important issues with education in Australia which need t be addressed before we focus on languages.
and nacho, there are a few regions in India where they speak French :p
Typed on an annoying touch screen so excuse the typos.
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and nacho, there are a few regions in India where they speak French :p
mind = blown
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Just would like to emphasize that Australia needs to reorganize the education sector and toughen up on learning and teaching, cause after the mining goes out, we're screwed to some extent, gotta keep up that high dollar for what its worth
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australian schooling = little stress = great
We'll see come november
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I don't think Australian Learning System = little stress holds for the bulk of people. We give kids 11 years of fuck all work to do, and then up it suddenly, which does result in stress.
Other countries give their students heaps of work to do from their first year of primary schooling, so when they reach exams they are in a much better position to deal with exams (though the exams are damn hard, so it essentially evens out).
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Not sure where this idea came from that you need to force kids to do work... I actually learnt the most during three years of primary school where times tables were not the main focus.
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Not sure where this idea came from that you need to force kids to do work... I actually learnt the most during three years of primary school where times tables were not the main focus.
Not everyone's as amazing as you Lex :P
I'm not sure whether you're addressing my way of seeing it, but I think it's more in the sense that kid's aren't made to learn and apply concepts anywhere as near as much as they should in primary school. It's moreso just touching on things, having a good time (not against this), and moving on to the next bit. Very little application.
That's why I think Sports (particularly tactical ones), Music (more focus on actually playing what you have learnt), and a few other things (Chess, board games, puzzles etc.) tend to have an impact on whether kids can pick up things faster in other areas.
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kids don't learn anything in the same method in which you are required to learn in VCE from prep-10. Having done shit all "learning" during these years is what lets them down. Imo it is why you find that kids who are made to learn instruments, certain sports, even cooking, can pick up other subjects a lot faster, because they can actually take in information.
I think some of the general knowledge stuff is rather useful though.
The stuff mainly lumped under "Humanities"/"SOSE" i'd dare say is the most useful thing to take away from high-school, well, besides practical things like IT skills, woodworking maybe, ect.
If it wasn't for this kind of humanities subject in earlier years a lot of the kids going through highschool would barely know anything about politics or the political system in Australia, our history/world history/WW1&2, ect. Sure you might be a whiz at mathematics or something in the earlier years but still know nothing about world history or how our political system works at all. I don't really think that leads to a well rounded person. Knowledge is power and hopefully telling kids about the horrible things during the world wars and how the political system works they can protect themselves from some of the darker sides of human nature out there or the government screwing them over.
English - Did a decent job to be honest, i mean its not like we can get rid of this anyway. I don't really have any criticisms but i don't think its absolutely outstanding either.
Science - Almost none of the kids paid attention in the science classes at my school, made it horrible for the teacher and the other students who wanted to learn. Most of the science was really basic or just rote learning anyway. I would of liked to of seen a bit of an introduction to things at a VCE level to help these kids decide on their VCE subjects. I thought i hated biology from my pre-VCE experience but once i took it in VCE i loved it. Not sure if other schools are like that but ours was really horrible with providing information on VCE subjects or giving us a taste of them. Really bad. All we had was a name and maybe a couple lines of description, thats it! Nothing else. I hear they've fixed this up recently.
The science wasn't full of a lot of content, my school had a forensics unit, i'm not sure if this is in the curriculum or they just did it of their own accord but everyone rather enjoyed that.
Math - Don't really have any comments here.
Can't think of the other things we did in high-school..... I think it does a decent job but a lot of the time, in retrospect, it just seemed like work for the sake of work rather than actually learning.
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australian schooling = little stress = great
We'll see come november
i still think, comparatively it's little stress.
i know my cousins will feel the same stress i will come november, despite being 3 years younger. that's ridiculous