Wadderloader! Maths and science teaching in Australia

Moreover, for upper secondary school many syllabi in maths, physics and chemistry are vague and provide little idea of what content material and concepts are required learning. It is quite possible for students from neighbouring schools to be following two completely different courses. The implications for tertiary faculties are serious. Assessment systems are essentially non-numerate, depend heavily on items that may or may not be the students' own work and over emphasise English. A recent Parliamentary inquiry into the education of boys recommended that:

Assessment procedures for maths and sciences must, as a first requirement, provide information about students’ knowledge, skills and achievement on the subject, and not be a de facto examination of students' English comprehension.

The fact that such an obvious statement was deemed necessary demonstrates the “wadderloader” condition of many “assessment” systems.

Boys from lower socio-economic backgrounds are frequently weaker in literacy than girls of similar background and are much weaker in English than mathematics. Hence making maths and the physical sciences a “de facto test of English comprehension” is socially and sexually discriminatory.

Any improvement in participation and performance in the enabling sciences is dependent on dramatic improvements in the standards of maths and numerical science in lower secondary schooling and the construction of syllabi that ensure that outcomes are reliable, validated and defined. Those improvements will not emanate from within “The Education Establishment”. Only parliaments can produce the improvements that are urgently needed. As a start they should take a club to the various Boards of Study (under whatever name). It is impossible to overstate how influential those institutions are - for good or evil. Certainly they are much more significant than either teacher unions or the public versus private debate because they determine everything in all subjects in all years and in all schools without exception.