preface
Government, NSW, is likely to announce a long-awaited reform plan for elite secondary school entrance exams in the coming weeks to make it an "unmentored" (uncoachable) (interpretation of Ajoo, a term that invalidates supplementary classes. But remedial schools warned that the reform would paralyze their entire industry.
In the new state, demand for elite secondary schools is growing every year, with nearly 15,000 students competing for about 4250 places in 2019. Some families spend as much as $20,000 a year on extra-curricular tutoring, online exam exercises or tutoring books to increase the chances that children will stand out in the most important exams.
The examination reform review will be completed by the end of this year and the reform will be implemented in 2020.
According to the Sun Herald Morning Post, the tests have been completed, but some speculate that the state government may not release the results until after the state elections in March.
1 Australia`s supplementary course industry
The industry is worth tens of millions of Australian dollars, according to (Australian Tutoring Association), the Australian tutorial service association, and that number is growing every year.
Some tutorial teachers cover almost every subject, from science to mathematics, from law to economics, earning A $60 to A $90 an hour.
About 1/4 of children in Australia are currently receiving extra-curricular counselling, at a different age. Some parents are already looking for suitable remedial schools before their children go to school. There are also parents who have never given their children supplementary classes and allowed them to develop freely.
Nearly 42.5 percent of parents in Australia choose face-to-face, one-on-one tutoring for their children, according to estimates from the Australian tutor industry, which is also the most common form of tutoring.
According to incomplete statistics, about 36000 people in Australia currently make tutorial classes their main job. There are an estimated 3500 to 4000 private tutorial schools in Australia. In addition, there are about 35000 informal "tutorial" teachers, they may be students, may be engaged in part-time jobs, and so on.
"everyone makes up, isn`t his own child? Then how can we keep up? "
"We belong to the first generation of immigrants, we are not good at English, when the children grow up, our knowledge simply can not help children with their homework, so we have to send to remedial schools."
Many parents take this idea and send their children to tutorial institutions.
This is an era in which supplementary classes are popula
Tarun Khanna, who runs a website that sells mock test questions, hopes to last as long as possible. He said: "in our view, this will be the end of our website business, there are a lot of people rely on it to do exercises. Some people don`t think the reform will work either. It`s just a political game they play every time. I still hope these people are right. "
One former headmaster recalls that the elite high school examination counseling industry began in the mid-1990s and was instigated by the head of an elite high school. He told the parents of local primary school students-your competitors are conducting rigorous extracurricular counselling.
"We were all stunned at that time. This is an open secret that no one can tell. We are still living in an age of pure IQ testing without counseling, when no one was able to manipulate the entrance test, but we know there is a clear trend. "
Fast forward to 2018, tutorial business flourished. There are also publishing companies that produce many extracurricular tutorials, such as the title Selective Schools and Scholarship Mathematics Tests.
There are also online tutoring businesses, such as Mr. Khanna`s single-person exercise site, which sells annual subscriptions to practice exams for about $100.
In addition, there are countless complementary schools, two of which-Pre university and James An-have been promoting their impressive success rate.
The biggest investment in the extracurricular tutoring industry is the design of simulated problem brushes.
Since the beginning of this century, the NSW Department of Education has not released a mock version of the elite secondary school entrance exam. So they have to think horizontally.
Each year, after primary school students take the formal elite high school entrance exam, these extracurricular tutoring industry Daniel will recall the students back for the test, piecing together the test questions a little by little. They then designed many similar versions of test questions and kept their intellectual property under strict secrecy.
Mr Khanna has no choice because he does not deal directly with students face-to-face. "it took us a while to get teachers together and write mock questions for you," he said. Most of the people who come out of the exam fall short of the standard, and there are a lot of tests of the standard. "
The simulation test paper is the key to the exam guidance. On Saturday mornings, tutors teach students the concepts involved in math, reading, and general aptitude tests (General Ability), and in the afternoon, they only do simulation tests.
Students are divided into three classes according to their abilities: upper, middle and next. One tutorial teacher said: "the worst-performing children don`t have a chance to go from tutoring class to anything." The best children will find patterns and patterns in doing exercises with questions and answers. "
The head of a smaller supplementary school (who says his name should be Joseph,) says math and reading tests cover more complex than what students learn in a normal day school.
"that`s why tutoring worked," he said. "this year, I did get feedback from a lot of students who just took the elite high school exam, and they report that the elite high school entrance exam is leaning towards a more abstract reasoning (abstract reasoning),. So you can pick out really talented students. "
One school organizes a full-scale simulation test for elite secondary school entrance exams each year in mid-January. More than 1000 pupils over the age of 11 will sit in an exhibition hall in the Olympic Park (Olympic Park) for nearly four hours, a complete simulation of the real test scene they will face on March 14 each year.
Students can even predict their official test scores in two months. In the past few years, these families may have spent thousands of Australian dollars on extra-curricular tutoring, and the tuition fee of 80 Australian dollars, organized by the tutorial society, is negligible. But the private companies behind the exam earn more than 80, 000 Australian dollars a day.
Omkar Pednekar, 13, received months of extra-curricular tutoring at a large remedial school to prepare for elite high school exams, which he found helpful. He said: "A little boring, because there are so many kids in the class, you don`t get a lot of attention." Most of the time it is time to do exercises over and over again. "
He also took a large mock test in the Olympic Park, which is harder than a real test. "it does help," he said. "it`s about how to deal with what`s going on in a real test-what happens in a mock test can happen in a formal exam."
He is now an eighth grader at an elite high school and says 3/4 of his classmates have received extra-curricular tutoring.
3. Root causes of inequality in education
Unequal distribution of social wealth and widening gap between the rich and the poo
If you want to go to an elite secondary school, you have to pay the tuition fee; if you want to go to a private school, you can afford to pay the tuition fee, and you can pay the sponsorship fee; Public schools with high quality and reputation also have to pay for the cost of living in school districts, learn a specialty, take children on a trip to meet the world, and need to spend a lot of money.
The inequality in education has led to a growing division of social levels in Australia.
The higher the socio-economic status of families, the easier it is for children to enter top universities, says Steven Park, vice president of Canberra University.
In Australia`s top eight universities, the proportion of students from lower socio-economic families is quite low.
The inequality of education leads to income inequality after work, the wealth of higher income families will be transmitted to the next generation more, and the gap between the rich and the poor will be further widened.
Parker pointed out that since 1980, inequality in per capita income in Australia has emerged and has received widespread attention in recent years. The higher the level of social inequality and the lower the intergenerational mobility, education has become the main driver of the decline in intergenerational mobility in Australia.
"over the past 50 years, Australia has enjoyed universal access to higher education and increased social inequality," says Park. Australia`s Gini coefficient has remained at an average level in OECD countries over the past 20 years, but it was above average in 2015, which means social inequality in Australia is growing. "
It has long been suggested that Western-style quality education, which we advocate, is only an examination-oriented education in a wider range. The children there need to acquire more knowledge and skills than we do, and these knowledge and skills need to be supported by family strength.
Chinese education divides students by explicit examination. Western education is actually through a loose process and secretly completes the social stratification.
"Public schools provide only limited basic education, and to be elite, they have to be purchased separately from the market, and people who cannot afford it will naturally be eliminated."
4. The purpose of the reform is to create "equal opportunities".
[23E8BBCD-48E0-D3EC-A072-9283649CE8CE]
His main concern is equal opportunity.
"with the upsurge in extracurricular tutoring, we are seeing a decline in the proportion of socially and economically disadvantaged students entering elite secondary schools," Scott minister said. The phenomenon of change is not very difficult. "
At the time, the Scott said the assessment of the exam admission system would be completed by the end of this year and that the reforms would be implemented by 2020.
A lot of people want to know if it is possible to take an exam that can`t be given extra tutoring. If not, what more subjective and inexpensive examination systems can be used by the Ministry of Education?
Christina Ho, a UTS scholar at Sydney University of Science and Technology, who focuses on elite secondary schools, thinks the mentoring school will find a way to prepare students for a new type of exam. Just as they did for the old type of exam.
"if you practice an exam format over and over again, you`ll get better grades," she said.
In the United States, from interviews to "life experiences," she said, there are tutorials for everything, and some middle-class families "are pretty much orchestrating their children`s childhood to meet the requirements of certain types of admissions systems."
"some people will advise your child what musical instruments to learn-already common, not small, individual phenomena-what sports they should play, what volunteer activities they should do, and what international experience they should have. You can get specialized services to help your child meet any [enrollment] requirements. "
James Tognolini, a psychologist at the University of Sydney, said research had shown that high-level thinking could indeed be assessed in a "no-pre-counseling" way, but he was also skeptical.
"to be honest, I do think that mentoring, mainly by teaching formulaic solutions to these higher-level thinking problems, can improve students` performance in these programs," he said.
Joseph, owner of the tutorial school, agrees that extra-curricular classes can find a way to prepare children for exams, although he also wants to see them be fairer.
"once there is a coherent model, I think the mentoring school will find a way to deal with it."
END
There is widespread inequality in education in Australia, and worse still, with the passage of time, it is growing more and more unequal.
The main determinants of unequal education and unequal allocation of education are the level of education of parents and the socio-economic status of the family. Discrimination on the basis of gender or ethnic background is less pronounced in Australia than these two factors.
One of the most obvious drawbacks of uneven distribution of educational resources has brought down the overall quality of education in Australia in a timely manner.
There may now be a hint as to what the new admissions system might look like.
When Virtual Elite High School Aurora College first picked out Elite Edition students this year, it used a very different choice model-based on feedback from teachers and parents, a short essay. Students` NAPLAN scores and their recent school performance reports make decisions.
At the same time, the NSW Bureau of Education did not provide any clues about the timing and content of the system reform. In response to questions from the newspaper, a spokesman said: "the elite system is currently under review and is not suitable for comment at this time."
