By Melissa Grant
Schools should be putting greater emphasis on teaching life skills as such as money management and first-aid, a new survey shows.
The national survey, by Monash University, also reveals three-quarters of Australians believe Mathematics and English should be given more priority in schools, while less regard should be given to languages and the arts.
More than half of Australians rate the performance of Australian public schools as OK, while nearly a quarter regard them as either very good or excellent.
This is despite ongoing media and political discussions of failing schools, crises in teacher quality and classroom behaviour.
But many Australians believe students should be taught life skills as part of the curriculum. This includes knowledge in money management, job preparation, first-aid training and critical thinking, such as recognising fraudulent content online.
Key findings of the report ‘Public opinions on Australian schools & schooling’ include:
– 56% of Australians rate the performance of Australian public schools as OK; 23% rate them as very good / excellent.
– 52% of Australians think the standard of education will remain the same in 10 years’ time.
– An overwhelming number of Australians believe Mathematics (76%) and English (75%) should be given more priority in schools. Languages (7%) and The Arts (4%) were least valued.
– The most important aspects of schools to a child’s education included: basic literacy and numeracy (69.8%), students being respectful to teachers and peers (54.6%) and teachers being of high quality (54.5%).
Dr Leahy said surprisingly few differences were found between voters of the main political parties, suggesting that politicians, policymakers and governments should collaborate to deliver the best possible student outcomes.
Community views differed when it came to identifying the most important issues of children’s education, with the fundamentals of respect and honesty being at the top of the list for older Australians.
“Levels of concern for students being respectful to teachers and peers is almost double amongst respondents in the 60+ years’ age group (72.4%) in comparison to those aged 18-29 years (38.9%). Discrepancies were also found between the two age cohorts when it came to the importance of literacy and numeracy, as well as teacher quality,” Dr Leahy said.
The traditional subjects of mathematics and English were still regarded as priority learning areas across the board, but science (46.2%) and health and physical education (19.2%) were seen as less important.
Adults widely supported the introduction of ‘life skills’ as part of the school curriculum with a particular focus on money and money management, job preparation and domestic tasks, as well as dedicated courses to equip students with skills in technology, coding and artificial intelligence for future jobs.
