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NAPLAN is Biased Against Rural Students

Nothing is being done to make national standardized examinations fair. To say an IQ test measures intelligence is a misnomer. A high score indicates that a person has mastered cultural values. The questions are based on what city people should know. Those in rural areas learn different norms of behavior.  ⎳ naplan a biased a against a With a rural a students a test australian metropolitan ⎳ School exams have the same bias. Standardization has gone against country students. A problem is obvious because outback children are a year behind the lucky ones living in metropolitan regions.  No wonder, travel to school takes much longer.   ⦿3 naplan b biased b against b With b rural b students b test ⦿3 Such questions as "Describe a day at the beach" are meaningless to students on a farm. Other irrelevancies are - "Write what you know about a train timetable". Young Aboriginals were far better in memorizing articles removed from a table than white Aussies. This sho...

"Rote" is a Dirty Word in Education

Students from overseas are saving Australia's tertiary education system. This is particularly true for postgraduate degrees. Most Australians attend a social science postgraduate course. This is despite the fact that these pieces of paper are virtually worthless in getting a job in today's world. Modern economies need IT, management, commerce, science, engineering, architecture and agriculture postgraduates. Doing maths and science at high school is the key but Australian students avoid these. This is due to the poor organization of subjects. Some states have no less than five grades of maths choices. There should be compulsory broad based maths despite failures along the way. Avoiding the difficult is not the way to go. We have teachers who are only qualified in social sciences teaching maths and science because there are too few fully-educated technical teachers. This is despite the fact that there is an oversupply of teachers generally. Foreign students...