Australia fares poorly in OECD’s Education at a Glance report

The latest Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)’s ‘Education at a Glance’ report reveals that Australia significantly underperforms against most OECD countries when it comes to investing in public schools.

The report found that Australia has the highest level of expenditure in private educational institutions in the OECD, at 0.7% of GDP. This is double the OECD wide average of 0.3% of GDP spent on private schools.Australia spends 3.3% of GDP on public schools, above the OECD average of 3.2% of GDP. Twelve countries invest more in public education than Australia does. These are Belgium, Costa Rica, Finland, France, Iceland, Israel, Korea, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Sweden and UK.

The report also found that Australia has the worst record on First Nations attainment when compared to Canada, Mexico, New Zealand and the United States. The gap is almost double the next largest in Mexico.

According to the report:

• Australia is only just over the OECD average with 57% of SES disadvantaged students reaching proficient level in maths by the end of school
• 88% of advantaged students are above proficiency level in maths – a gap of 31% point between the top and bottom quartiles of advantage/disadvantage.
• School completion is Australia is going backwards to 76% completions last year.

https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/education-at-a-glance-2024_c00cad36-en.html