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campusreview.com.au
Turning the tide on STEM
Where do universities fit in the
push for a STEM teacher strategy?
By Dallas Bastian
E
very high school in Australia will
have at least one specialist STEM
teacher, if a workforce strategy
floated by Simon Birmingham comes to
fruition and meets its goals.
In a speech in Sydney, the education
minister called on the states and territories
to work with the government on
a workforce strategy focused on
STEM teachers.
“I hope that by year’s end the states and
territories will agree to a new school reform
package … [that] will include requirements
for a national teaching workforce strategy
which can identify and pinpoint the areas
around Australia where we’re lacking
particular skills in our teachers and ensure
we get our universities to train future
teaching graduates in those scientific
disciplines that are needed,” he said.
Following the announcement, the
chief executive of Science & Technology
Australia (STA), Kylie Walker, said two
decades of decline in high school maths
and science results and enrolments were a
significant risk to Australia’s future capability
and prosperity.
“Intermediate and advanced maths
enrolments are most worrying, with
declines from 54 per cent in 1992, to 36 per
cent in 2012,” Walker said.
“We already have skilled workforce
deficits in some areas of technology, and
we know the major growth in future jobs
will be in science, technology, engineering
and maths. We need to support teachers
with the right skills to prepare our students
for the jobs of tomorrow.”
Dr Anne Forbes of Macquarie University
commended the government’s STEM plan.
“The research is clear that all science and
mathematics high school teachers should
have deep knowledge of their subject
areas,” Forbes said. “Imagine your child
being taught piano by a ‘music’ teacher
who couldn’t read music.”
The trick to its success will be recruiting
and monitoring compliance, she added.
But the deputy leader of the Opposition
and shadow minister for education and
training, Tanya Plibersek, took to Twitter to
question how the government will pay for
the move.
Dr Jane Hunter of the University of
Technology Sydney said the government’s
plan misses the mark.
“Where are these people who are going
to teach the STEM disciplines going to
come from? Recruiting teachers to teach
the STEM disciplines has been historically
difficult in Australia – there is a worldwide
shortage of teachers in these disciplines,”
Hunter said.
Universities Australia (UA) argued that
to get more specialist science, maths
and technology teachers into Australian
classrooms, the government needs to
end the university funding freeze.
UA chief executive Catriona Jackson said
the freeze means that next year there will
be fewer students studying STEM, along
with all the other disciplines.
“The government’s freeze makes it more
difficult – not easier – for our nation’s
universities to meet the growing demand
for STEM skills across the economy,
including as teachers.”
STA echoed some of UA’s points.
Walker said the body hopes Birmingham’s
commitment to developing teacher
skills extends to encouraging and
incentivising universities to attract more
students to undergraduate science and
maths degrees.
“The current caps on funding for
undergraduate degrees pose significant
challenges to building a STEM-qualified
education workforce,” she said.
“STEM degrees are important to
securing Australia’s prosperity, and though
they are costly to deliver, they will pay
dividends.”
When asked by a journalist at the
Sydney event whether the government
would use funding powers to ‘strong-
arm’ universities into providing more
STEM places, Birmingham said: “We have
to do whatever it takes to get skilled,
science-focused teachers in classrooms
teaching science.”
While he voiced his confidence that the
states, territories and universities will be on
board to address the issue, he added that
should the government encounter any
problems, it “does have the powers in terms
of funding agreements with the universities
to be able to require them to focus in
certain areas”.
“There have been in recent years record
numbers of people enrolled in teaching
qualifications; we need to make sure
they’re studying the subject specialisations
that are needed in the science disciplines,
and ultimately, having known about this
problem for many years, we must take
whatever steps are necessary to fix it for the
future,” Birmingham said. ■
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