Check against delivery
It’s good to be here with you today for the launch of the Choose Maths programme, a project that will help strengthen mathematics education in Australia.
Your partnership with the BHP Billiton Foundation on the Choose Maths programme demonstrates what can be achieved when educators and industry work together.
Even in areas traditionally dominated by the public sector, such as education, this is a reminder that not all wisdom resides in the needs of politicians and bureaucrats.
As we have seen, the Choose Maths programme will work with students, parents and teachers over five years to turn around community attitudes to participation in mathematics, with a particular focus on girls and young women.
We need to change attitudes to mathematics amongst young Australians. Research has shown that attitudes are lowering participation, again particularly amongst some cohorts of girls and young women.
This isn’t just an issue in Australia, nor is it a recent one. A recent OECD report on gender equality found less than one in 20 girls from OECD countries considered careers in maths, science, technology and engineering.
We need to tackle the stereotypes that discourage further studies in mathematics.
The Choose Maths programme will work at a national, classroom and personal level to attract young women to study maths, and perhaps to pursue a career in this field.
This programme couldn’t come at a better time — there is increasing national recognition that we must strengthen the delivery of mathematics education.
According to international testing, the performance of Australian schools in mathematics is falling. This is despite enormous public investments in real, per student funding over the last two decades.
Of the countries tested in 2003, only five significantly outperformed Australia in mathematical literacy. By 2012 we were outperformed by 12 countries.
This decline has been attributed to a range of factors. There’s the increased choice of senior secondary course offerings, as well as the perceived value of these subjects. And then there are changes to prerequisite requirements at tertiary institutions. I don’t think these can divorced separately from each other, I believe they are a suite of problems that need to be addressed in order to overcome the issues of declining participation.
As in all the subject areas, teachers are crucial in maintaining the interest of their students in math. However, due to perceptions, it is probably even more crucial in mathematics.
Ensuring that Australian teachers are the world’s best is one of the most important things we can do for our students and the two components of the Choose Math programme that look at teacher development and recognition are important elements in ensuring high quality teacher development.
My personal experience in education has extended far beyond graduating high school and university; my mother and also her brother were teachers, my mother has only recently retired, and I have seen that we have asked our schools and our teachers to do so many different things over the last two or three decades.
A classroom is unrecognisable now from what it was when most of our parents left the classroom 20 or 30 years before they bring in their first child as a student.
The skills that we ask teachers to have now are very different to what a lot of teachers were originally trained in. And just as our teacher education process needs to change, it needs to reflect the fact that you change – both the way you relate to the curriculum, how you deliver it and, indeed, the very challenge you are expecting of our society, government and parents.
I have seen what the passion of a teacher can achieve in a classroom. I know, as many of you here would have experienced yourself, the magic of a classroom between teacher and student is the key that drives student outcomes.
The Advisory Group’s report has identified areas for improvement in both the content and delivery of teacher training and this is helping us develop strategies to get very best training for our teachers, now and into the future.
One recommendation is that all primary teachers should graduate with at least one subject specialisation, prioritising science, mathematics or a language.
Mathematics is now one of the core subject areas in which new teachers must be competent to teach in order to assure their classroom readiness.
While having teachers in primary school who are passionate and skilled in teaching mathematics will also encourage students to continue to study the subject into secondary school.
We also need to continue work on addressing the decline that occurs in secondary school. Encouraging young women to continue in maths is an important part of this along with out-of-field teachers and. And there is also the issue of university entry pre-requisites.
I hope your work and this programme will make an important contribution to strengthening mathematics education in this country and increasing the community’s understanding of all the doors that mathematics study can open.
I look forward to continuing to work with you to promote the importance of maths and science study and teaching.
Thank you.
(ENDS)