Teaching degrees need a greater focus on maths and science, according to Australian education minister

Australian education minister, Simon Birmingham, has called for the Australian government to use university funding to improve maths and science education in high schools.

Birmingham’s proposals follow the federal government’s report that, in 2013, one in five teachers teaching year seven to 10 general science had not gone through university studies in that subject area. This has been deemed as “unacceptable” by Simon Birmingham.

In a speech two weeks ago, Birmingham expressed that the government is willing to use university funding as a way of tackling falling participation rates in high school maths and science.

In order to create incentives for specialisation in maths and science subjects, the education minister has suggested that states and territories should “be willing to make clear to universities where their employment priorities lie” and hence, motivate prospective teachers to study maths and science subjects.

“Between better workforce planning and smarter use of technology every high school should have access to specialist teachers to teach specialist science and maths subjects,” he said.

“And we should strive to achieve this within the next five to ten years.”

However, Birmingham recognised that it is not within the right of the federal government to demand states only to hire teachers with maths and science backgrounds. On the contrary, the minister has said that it is certainly possible for the federal government to “help the states to influence enrolments to secure the science teachers we need for the future”.

Birmingham’s proposals follow a report from Australia’s chief scientist Alan Finkel, who noted a long-term decline in year 12 students selecting science-based subjects.

The report reflects the number of students choosing science had fallen from 55% in 2002 to 51% in 2013, although the number of students choosing maths had remained the same.

The report also argued that insufficient universities required maths as a compulsory subject for degrees, discovering that it is only required for five out of 37 universities offering a bachelor of science.

Scientist Finkel also called for a reformation of the current system, suggesting that the government allowed students to choose “less demanding” subjects in order to achieve higher overall scores.