Last week, it was announced by the New South Wales, Australia government that mathematics will be an integral subject of K-12 education in the near future. At this moment, students have the liberty to drop Maths after grade 10. However, the ‘compulsory Maths till 12th year’ is just an announcement without any commitment or any details about its implementation. The state’s education minister has also pointed to the fact that HSC exams for grade 12 won’t have Maths in it, not it will carry any value in the ATAR (Australia Tertiary Admission Rank) scores.
Premier of NSW, Gladys Berejiklian has taken this opportunity to show that compulsory Maths education is really needed by everyone and believes people can manage their finances better if they know Maths. This claim wasn’t very well accepted though. People believe its just an effort by the government to show off that they are involved in some big decision making procedure. This has also triggered people in the sense that low wages and high unemployment are the reasons people are having a hard time managing their finances instead of not knowing mathematics.
Can Compulsory Maths education help people to get new jobs?
According to a survey last year by the Centre of Future Work, it was found that only 64.6% of people studying either Maths or Science can get a job within the next four months after graduating. Rather, job oriented courses like Medicine (95%) or Teaching (more than 83%) have higher chances to give more employment opportunities. It would also be a lot better if students invest their time in learning soft skills like business communication or problem-solving skills, which the employers insist on.
There are second thoughts on the fact that students need to have proper ‘mathematics literacy‘ but that can be done until grade 10 itself if the quality of education is improved rather than enforcing compulsory Maths education till grade 12. If schools are funded properly, teachers can work more efficiently. They can recognize and spot the challenges and issues that students are facing in the subject.
Overall it doesn’t feel that it is in the best interest to make Maths education compulsory for everyone till grade 12. Till now the government has no concrete plans on how to go with this and it looks like it won’t be implemented anytime soon.
