Australia needs to improve its pre-university math and science education

The current state of primary and secondary math and science education is far from ideal. Learning mathematics and science is very slow until the last two years of high school, then the pace picks up enormously in the important last two years before university, and then again in university. As such, the extremely slow pace before year 11 hardly prepares aspiring science university students well for the next 5 or more years of their study.

This can be shown in international benchmark tests such as TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study). According to the TIMSS 2007 Math Report (page 35, 38; 47, 50th in pdf), at year 8 level, Australians perform statistically significantly worse than Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Hungary, England, Russia, the US and Lithuania. Also, a 95th percentile Australian would not even reach the 75th percentile mark in Singapore, Korea or Taiwan; while an average Australian would fall within the bottom quartile in Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan. In other words, our supposedly gifted students, those within the top 5%, can not even compare with the top quarter of the top math nations. This is a definite cause for concern.

It is also concerning that Australia is below the United States, despite some of their states having a very poor "fuzzy math" curriculum. Such curriculum had very little emphasis on simple basic techniques such as manipulating fractions or even multiplication or division without a calculator. Such reforms had come because the old regime was not perfect. However, this demonstrates what can happen when reforms go wrong.

It could be said that these East Asian nations have more emphasis on the students doing well in math by parents, as a matter of culture. However, even without this emphasis for some students, the top Australian students, especially those who find the current curriculum up to year 10 unchallenging, could do very well simply with a much stronger curriculum than currently.

Australia is currently in a process of implementing a national curriculum. While a reform of math standards is definitely needed, I find it doubtful that standards will reach those seen in Taiwan, Korea or Singapore. But I do hope so, it is definitely needed here.