More Time Needed on Yr 12 Maths

Tuesday 31st January 2012 9:24am

More time should be spent fine turning Year 12 maths and science competencies to help students cope with first year university, the Technology Industry Association (TIA) says.

TIA Skills and Workforce Manager Andrea McCarthy said students would benefit more from this types of tuition and it would decrease the first year tertiary maths drop out rate by students who could not cope.

"It's a case of enabling students to get the TER score required to gain entry into a technology tertiary course, which has the flow on impact of addressing the technology skills shortage," she said.

"Rather than channelling teacher/student time to complete a maths/science related research project, it would be more beneficial if this time was spent fine tuning core maths and science competency to ensure those studying obtained scores needed to gain entry into technology related tertiary study.

"The reason why we want this is so that students can cope with the maths taught in their first year of tertiary studies."

A recent TIA survey found fewer teachers from a maths, science, technology or IT background were involved in supervising last year's Year 12 SACE Research Project.

From the 300 teachers who took part in the survey, less than 20% were involved in supervising a Research Project.

One teacher commented that only staff with a low teaching load were selected for supervision. Another wrote that "very few mathematics teachers (ie zero) were asked to supervise."

The survey also found:

No students at 21 of the respondent schools completed a maths or science based Research Project
Only 20 respondents said they supervised a class where up to three students completed a science or maths based project.

Despite concern over the low numbers of students, Ms McCarthy said the bigger issue was the decline of science and maths as core subjects in the curriculum, which directly affects the technology industry.

"It's a concern that fewer Year 12's are studying a research project in maths and science, but given this is a new subject area and there are dwindling numbers of maths proficient students it is no surprise," she said.

SACE Board Chief Executive Dr Paul Kilvert said specific subject related information about the topics students choose for their projects was not recorded. "The research project provides opportunities for students to explore areas of interest in which they can devleop skills related to learning areas, including maths, sciences and the humanities," he said.

Source: The Advertiser 31 January 2012 by Martina Simos