Have never forced my children into doing homework and their teachers are well aware of my thoughts on this.

''Finland had the most effective educational system'' i agree if what we are measuring as effective or education is UNESCO-driven Performance Standards (PISA) -- and not actual academic knowledge. The decline in teaching methods and curriculum content, the 3R's are largely ignored, instead we are obsessed with innovation & social engineering our children. The type of so-called education being promoted is not education. It is a system of group-oriented, collectivist, brainwashing/training in lower level skills and the necessary attitudes and values for the workforce, using the computer in conjunction with programmed learning software. This kind of learning by passes the brain and a key feature of operant conditioning, does not allow for any real thinking processes to take place.

Go back to the 3R's, get rid of calculators and computers from the classroom and teach traditional Alpha-Phonics which has not been taught in classrooms for decades.

Why do engineers and execs from Silicon Valley giants like Google, Apple, Yahoo and Hewlett-Packard send their children to schools where computers are not allowed in the classroom? In 1984 Dustin Heuston of Utah's World Institute for Computer-Assisted Teaching (WICAT) tells us why.

"We've been absolutely staggered by realising the computer has the capability to act as if it were ten of the top psychologists working with one student...You've seen the tip of the iceberg. Won't it be wonderful when the child in the smallest county in the most distant area or in the most confused urban setting can have the equivalent of the finest school in the world on that terminal and no one can get between that child and that curriculum? We have great moments coming in the history of education."

PISA rankings are the focus of Government and media across the globe and every government wants that number one spot. PISA is the baby of the OECD and UNESCO which guarantees curriculum will reflect these standards. This is why in Australia Sustainability is now a cross-curriculum priority, that's every subject including math.

NSW government just announced a review of education and stated they will ''implement David Gonski’s latest report into practice and will tailor the national education reform agenda (ACARA) to the NSW context'' Gonski report & ACARA are basically the global system every other country will/are implementing under different names. This is the reshaping and restructuring of our children into the Global Citizen with introduction of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Agenda 2030. The UN has made it clear education is central to this agenda.

“The world is changing – education must also change. Societies everywhere are undergoing deep transformation, and this calls for new forms of education to foster the competencies that societies and economies need, today and tomorrow. This means moving beyond literacy and numeracy, to focus on learning environments and new approaches to learning for greater justice, social equity and global solidarity. Education must be about learning to live on a planet under pressure. It must be about cultural literacy, on the basis of respect and equal dignity, helping weave together the social, economic and environmental dimensions of sustainable development.”

Along with the SDGs parents also need to understand, democratic education and collaborative learning, educating with Neuroscience and accelerated. The following two paragraphs from the latest 140 page Gonski report should concern all.

-Develop an online and on-demand formative assessment tool, to be based on revised national curriculum learning progressions. This would help teachers monitor student progress in real time and better tailor teaching.

-Introduce a national Unique Student Identifier for all students to be used throughout schooling. This would enable the consistent tracking of students if they move between schools or systems.

A computerised, personalised student plan is called a ''learning genome''. The child’s learning style, background, & dispositions will be monitored & assessed through the entire process. Measuring student growth has nothing to do with academics and everything to do with conforming attitudes and behaviours. The ''Unique Student Identifier is 1984 and a brave new world on steroids.

"When education is beaten by training, civilisation dies." C.S. Lewis