By Jas ChambersPresident, Science & Technology Australia
How would you feel if I told you that today's morning coffee was going to be made by someone with no training in making the perfect brew? Or that your medical treatment was going to be performed by an engineer filling in for the day? You might applaud them for having a go, but you'd probably be more comfortable with someone who had specific expertise - particularly for the second one!
So why aren't we more troubled that more than a third of the country's secondary maths teachers have no training in the subject? Why aren't we more concerned that three out of every four students in years 7-10 will likely be taught maths at some stage in their secondary schooling by an educator whose expertise is history, physical education, or geography, rather than a specialty maths teacher?
The evidence suggests this is what's happening right now - as far as we know. Because something else we should be troubled by is that Australia doesn't know exactly how many secondary maths teachers we have or where they are teaching.
Nobody is crunching the numbers.
Like Australia's train system that came off the rails during Federation when states couldn't agree on the size of the tracks, we've never agreed on a national system for measuring our teacher workforce. Do you want to get a picture of how many subject-skilled secondary teachers there are? You'll need to disembark the NSW train, cross over to the other tracks and board the Victorian train before repeating the process at the South Australian border - and then hope for the best, as most states don't even collect this information.
If all of this sounds like it adds up to a dysfunctional system, you've understood the maths.
Addressing this issue is urgent and has implications for a range of Government policy objectives, from delivering on the aspirations of the Ambitious Australia report, to Closing the Gap for Indigenous Australians, to meeting the demand of Australia's booming Artificial Intelligence workforce - not to mention ensuring Australia's future productivity and economic resilience.
To be clear, teachers are not to blame. The English, PE, and geography teachers who step up to help by teaching maths at our secondary schools are heroic and doing the best they can - and are often doing a good job - to ensure that their students have the maths skills they need. And that generation will need maths skills more than ever. The jobs of today and tomorrow are written in the 'language of maths' - from understanding and leveraging AI to designing and manufacturing future products, to de-risking and building major infrastructure like bridges, hospitals and energy projects.
Government data shows that jobs enabled by science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) vocational education and training, and university qualifications are growing at least 10 per cent over the next five years alone - twice the rate of non-STEM jobs and second only to jobs in health care and social assistance.
What's happening with maths education in our secondary schools is failing our children and not preparing the current and future workforce with the skills it needs.
While we have seen some big schools reform agreements announced in recent years, we still have a system with widespread teacher shortages, with many teachers required to step into roles where they're teaching outside their area of expertise (referred to as out-of-field). So, our kids are learning critical subjects - like maths, but also science and even English - from teachers, who through no fault of their own, do not have deep or relevant specialist training.
We know that students who are taught maths by out-of-field teachers perform more poorly than those taught by maths specialists. We also know that the problem is most acute in our regional and remote schools, and in schools in lower socio-economic urban areas. So out-of-field teaching is not just an economic issue, it's an equity issue.
We also know the system has consistently left First Nation's kids behind. Results from the 2023 Trends in International Mathematics and Science (TIMS) Study showed only 45 per cent of Year 4 and 33 per cent of Year 8 First Nations students achieved national proficiency standards compared to 76 per cent and 67 per cent of non-First Nations students. This is not the student nor the teachers' fault; it's a system failure that is producing and widening the gap. Any response must include First Nations perspectives and culturally competent solutions.
This isn't good for Australia, it isn't good for our kids, and it certainly isn't good for our teachers. It increases teacher stress and burnout and compromises their ability to inspire their students and instil the deep understanding of maths needed for the best outcomes.
The case is clear and urgent. It is imperative we ensure our kids have the skills needed to navigate the jobs of the future and drive Australia's productivity and prosperity.
To do this, we need urgent reform to our education system. We need better teacher data and resourcing to up-skill out-of-field teachers to ensure they have the skills and confidence needed to give our kids the quality education they need and deserve.
A consortium of Australia's maths education bodies has come together to develop solutions to this pressing issue. It calls for a national strategy to address the critical task of upskilling out-of-field teachers. And this strategy must include steps to harmonise registration and data collection process across the states and territories - we need to get our systems back on track.
The Education Minister's recent announcement to combine the four federal entities responsible for teacher and education support into a new Teaching and Learning Commission presents a prime opportunity to address this issue - developing the National Strategy should be one of its first tasks. This would also be timely because Education Ministers have directed the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority to start work on curriculum reform, beginning with the early years' maths curriculum. But reform to equip our youngest learners with essential maths skills will hit a roadblock in the secondary years if we don't work to fix the out-of-field teaching capacity.
If we want the future to add up for our children we must focus on their education, or they will individually and collectively pay for our economic missteps and squandered opportunities.
