Indigenous academic and activist Noel Pearson says lives are being destroyed as long as schools favour inquiry-based learning over evidence-backed explicit instruction.
Speaking to a Catholic Education conference in Canberra on Monday, Mr Pearson praised the Canberra Goulburn Catholic school system for its pursuit of explicit instruction based on the science of reading and the science of learning.
Mr Pearson said he felt "sickened" by the state of education which allowed generations of disadvantaged students to fall behind.
"Every year we spend stuffing around and failing to see the evidence for what it is, we fail children. We destroy lives," he said.
"Yeah, the middle class kids, they do alright. They get through, they go to university. But it's the kids I'm concerned, about the kids of the underclass. The kids who are disadvantaged.
"Every year we waste stuffing around and failing to see 50 years of evidence about what works in the teaching of reading and learning generally are lives lost."
Mr Pearson said problems such as youth incarceration and crime were related to failed education.
"What do you think is going on in Alice Springs? That's the product of failed learning, which is the consequence of failed teaching in the communities from which those kids come and there's no solution in sight."
Mr Pearson, who is the founder and chairman of Good to Great Schools Australia, said the archdiocese's Catalyst program was the most important development in Australian school education.
"You guys hold the hope for the country because it's a complete system reform approach. Something we've never had.
"No system in Australia has grasped school reform like you guys are doing now. And I think you're going to be a beacon for the rest of the country."
Mr Pearson said Good to Great Schools started off advocating for system-wide changes to instruction but when there was little interest from education leaders, it pivoted to producing curriculum products for explicit teaching.
He said inquiry-based learning, a popular model where students are encouraged to follow their own interests to learn concept implicitly, was valuable in students' social and cultural lives but in schools, teacher-led instruction was most effective, especially for disadvantaged students.
Catholic Education Canberra Goulburn director Ross Fox said the system would be renewing its strategic plan this year.
"We've got great confidence that with our current approach to learning and teaching, bringing religious education into the way we're approaching it... we can be one of the best education systems in Australia, if not the world," Mr Fox said.
He said schools would have to "stick at it" and avoid being distracted from their goals.
We've made it a whole lot easier for you to have your say. Our new comment platform requires only one log-in to access articles and to join the discussion on The Canberra Times website. Find out how to register so you can enjoy civil, friendly and engaging discussions. See our moderation policy here.
