Education experts call for Victoria’s maths curriculum to be overhauled

Education experts are calling for a major review into Australia’s maths curriculum amid students’ declining academic results.

Leading experts are calling for a maths curriculum overhaul, with a major review set to focus on fixing declining academic results.

The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) will release a draft new national curriculum for public consultation on April 29 – the first major review since 2014.

Maths and science groups including the Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers have issued a joint statement ahead of the review calling for a greater focus on problem solving skills.

In the statement, the groups said teaching maths content was “no longer enough”.

“It is not enough to have knowledge – they must have the skills to take that knowledge and apply it to solve unknown problems, and do it quickly,” the statement said.

Since 2003, Australia’s results in maths have declined further than any country except Finland, according to Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) data.

Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers chief executive Allan Dougan said a problem solving approach would have a positive impact on students’ experience of learning maths.

“Maths hasn’t really changed for 300 years and to some extent that’s true but how we use it and what we do with it has fundamentally changed,” Mr Dougan said.

“The whole idea of a maths class where the teacher teaches the content and the students practice it 300 times, that’s what we’re moving away from.

Leading experts are calling for a maths curriculum overhaul, with a major review set to focus on fixing declining academic results Picture: iStock

“Instead, the classroom should be a place where students can collaborate and share their ideas and they can really have a chance to explain and wrestle the tasks.”

He said one problem solving task could involve Grade 6 students taking part in an activity called It All Adds Up, where each letter of the alphabet is given a dollar value.

“Letter A is $1 to Z being $26. You can start asking students open questions such as finding a four-letter word that costs $50 … the success of this task is how they approach it and how they think about problem solving.”

Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute director Professor Tim Marchant said he was concerned by the shortage of qualified maths teachers in Australia.

“The data shows about 50 per cent of schools have maths classes taught by teachers that aren’t qualified in maths,” Prof Marchant said.

“The Victorian Government has started a new initiative where they’re providing funding to support out-of-field teachers training to get a graduate certificate to become qualified to teach maths, so that’s a really good start.”

Prof Marchant said group activities in the classroom helped learning and made maths “fun”.

He suggested hands-on learning experiences including using the Rubik's cube to help with problem solving.

Monash University Emeritus Professor of Education Peter Sullivan said the curriculum needed to undergo several changes to make learning more simplified.

“The revised curriculum needs to be simply written so teachers can understand and comprehend it, we want the big ideas clearly articulated,” Prof Sullivan said.

“I think we should always be reviewing all curriculum regularly to ensure they’re working. I don’t think there’s a lot of calls from teachers for change but that doesn’t mean there can’t be improvements.”