Schools need to lift their game COMING after the school funding row, last week's Program for International Student Assessment results provided the education lobby with a golden opportunity to vent its claims. Not that those claims needed repeating, for they have become articles of religion. But that doesn't stop them being demonstrably false. The first is that our education system entrenches disadvantage. PISA, the teachers' unions thundered, highlighted "unacceptable and widening gaps between students from different backgrounds." The trumpet blowers at the ABC then reported that "wealthy students" were trouncing those from "the lowest socio-economic group."