International

What should Australian schools and teachers focus on in order to improve students’ general understanding of mathematics and science? In her final Teacher column of the year, Dr Sue Thomson explores newly released TIMSS 2019 data to highlight some of the strengths and weaknesses of Australian students at the national level.

Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) measures how well Year 4 and Year 8 students from around the world are performing in science and mathematics. In this infographic we look at Australian student achievement over time.

Andreas Schleicher – Director for Education and Skills at the OECD and long-time Teacher columnist – joins us from Paris for this episode to give his take on all things 2020, talk about the longer term impacts of the school shutdowns and share how different education systems have responded to the pandemic restrictions.

The annual Global Teacher Prize has been awarded for 2020. Ranjitsinh Disale, a primary school teacher in India who has transformed education for girls in his community, has been named winner of the US $1 million award. Here, we look at how he’s improving learning at his school.

Australian students have performed significantly better in the latest cycle of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study in Year 8 mathematics and Year 4 and Year 8 science – but not in Year 4 mathematics – than they did in 2015. Here, we take a closer look at the results.

One-to-one and small-group tutoring have emerged as a catch-up strategy for schools to address student learning gaps as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, with government funded programs announced here in Australia and overseas. Dr Pauline Ho and Dr Tanya Vaughan look at the evidence and give five key takeaways for school leaders and teachers.

To assess student access to remote learning during school closures due to COVID-19, UNICEF collected data about broadcast (television and radio) and digital (internet-based) instruction policies from more than 100 ministries of education around the world. Today’s infographic shares some of the findings.

At the start of the millennium, students around the world participated in PISA (the Programme for International Student Assessment) for the first time. Twenty years on, what can the wealth of data collected so far tell us about education in Australia?

‘While this crisis has exposed the many inadequacies and inequities in our education systems, this moment also holds the possibility that we won’t return to the status quo when things return to “normal”,’ Andreas Schleicher writes in his latest Teacher column.

Teachers are asked to respond to new and uncertain situations all the time – from keeping abreast of subject knowledge updates to making quick pivots when a lesson isn’t quite going to plan. Dr Rebecca Collie joins us in this podcast episode to discuss teacher adaptability.