HSC 2023 subject enrolments reveal students rejecting hard maths

There are major concerns for Australia’s future workforce as new HSC subject enrolment figures reveal students don’t want to study tough maths.

HSC students are choosing the easiest maths courses for their senior studies, or ditching the subject altogether, in what leaders say is a dire sign for Australia’s already-in-crisis infrastructure pipeline.

Enrolment figures for the 2023 HSC show the number of students taking the advanced maths and extension 1 subjects has fallen by 3 and 4 per cent respectively, a reduction of more than 900 pupils.

Compared to 2022, only eight more students are studying extension 2, the hardest course, despite 1300 more students sitting the HSC overall.

Engineers Australia’s chief engineer Jane MacMaster said the decline of advanced maths in high schools was “a huge concern”, and would lead to fewer homegrown engineers and even more reliance on migrants if the issue was not urgently addressed.

“We are already short tens of thousands of engineers for the forward pipeline of infrastructure, for nuclear-powered submarines, for the energy transition, for sovereign manufacturing capabilities … and it is certainly going to get worse before it gets better, unless we address … maths,” she said.

Engineers Australia chief engineer Jane MacMaster.

Head of UNSW’s Gonski Institute Professor Kim Beswick.

“Anything that needs designing in the world requires maths: rockets, robots, water systems, wind turbines, bridges.

“We have thousands of engineers looking to retire over the next five years and we have relied for a long time on our overseas-born engineers … but certainly we need to train more young Australians, and a big part of that is getting them inspired about maths.”

Fewer HSC students are choosing challenging maths subjects for their senior studies. Picture: Brenton Edwards

Director of the Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute Professor Tim Marchant said fewer skilled mathematicians would also impact the financial services, data science and medical research industries.

“Some of these skill gaps are … in industries part-filled by migrants, (who are) really valuable, but it’s really important to have our own homegrown students come through and fill these jobs as well,” he said.

Head of UNSW’s Gonski Institute Kim Beswick said the declining popularity of mathematics and STEM subjects had been a problem for years, and was now being reflected in university enrolments.

“We don’t have enough people studying STEM subjects at university, and the main barrier is the lack of maths,” she said.

Eddie Woo, Professor of Practice in the University of Sydney’s school of education, pictured with maths teachers-in-training. Picture: Jonathan Ng

“I think it’s a lot to do with the way we teach those subjects — we don’t make their human implications clear enough for kids.

“The ones who have done maths are the ones who are going to solve the energy crisis and climate change and possibly cure cancer.”

The fall in enrolments had only worsened as a result of out-of-field teaching, Ms MacMaster and Professor Beswick said, which resulted in students becoming disengaged from the subject.

A report published by the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership in 2021 found up to 46 per cent of high schools maths teachers in NSW could be teaching outside their area of expertise, with 30 per cent of those surveyed indicating they had no tertiary education in maths.

“The teaching is probably a little less inspiring than it would be if you had a teacher who really knew and loved the subject,” Professor Beswick said.

“A very competent expert teacher is more likely to excite kids and make the think ‘maths is great’.”

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