Australian classrooms among most disruptive in the world, new data reveals

Data collected by the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) showed Australia had one of the worst disciplinary climates compared to countries that had better or similar performance in the 2022 test.

Two fifths of Australian students said there was noise and disorder in most classes and that students get distracted by using devices such as smartphones, websites and apps, or they were distracted by peers using these devices.

Japan had the most orderly classrooms, followed by Korea, Macao (China) and Austria.

Finland had a similar disciplinary climate to Australia, while Sweden and New Zealand had more disorderly classrooms than Australia.

Tasmania and the Northern Territory had the worst disciplinary climate out of the states and territories, while New South Wales and Victoria scored the best on this measure, but still behind the OECD average.

Independent and Catholic schools had a better school disciplinary climate than government schools.

Australian students reported higher exposure to bullying than all comparison countries except Latvia. Students in New Zealand and the United Kingdom had similar levels of bullying to Australia.

Students also reported a lower sense of feeling safe at school compared to the OECD average. Students in the Northern Territory, public school students and girls reported feeling substantially less safe at school.

Centre for Independent Studies director of education Glenn Fahey said the data on disciplinary climate had been trending in the wrong direction for the past decade.

"It means that Australian schools are among the most disruptive and disorderly in the world," Mr Fahey said.

"And given the close relationship that the classroom environment has to students learning outcomes, it's little wonder that we see often disappointing results when it comes to achievement and other outcomes. When we have real difficulty in many cases, maintaining orderly classrooms."

Australian classrooms are highly dependent on technology, but Mr Fahey said digital devices were also a significant source of distraction in school even when using them for educational purposes.

"It definitely does force us to question whether all of our usage of devices is absolutely necessary, and where possible, limiting the use of digital devices," he said.

"There's very good evidence to suggest that on a cost benefit basis the costs associated with the lack of attention are likely to outweigh any benefits that might come from efficiency."

Mr Fahey said cultural differences in south-east Asian countries in how children and adults interact could partly explain the more orderly classrooms.

However, Australian classrooms were also much more disorderly than other English-speaking countries like the United Kingdom and Ireland, he said.

"It tells us that there are manageable things that we can do in the way that we manage the way that we run classrooms and the way that we set up expectations for students.

"The element that's often missing in Australian classrooms is not a lack of goodwill for from teachers, but difficulty in having the resources and common expectations needed to ensure that classrooms are consistently run in an orderly and productive way."