Declining rates of high-level maths in VCE contributing to nation’s widening skills gap

Australia’s engineering skills gap and labour shortage is the highest it’s been for more than a decade. New Swinburne research could explain why.

With the number of students selecting higher-level maths subjects in the final years of high school steadily dropping for decades, the research has discovered the reasons why and how these barriers are locking promising students out of in-demand jobs.

Lead author, Swinburne STEM expert Dr Emily Cook, says, “we need to meet students where they are to show the benefits of maths”. 

“There is not a single decision point students make about their VCE subjects, they are constantly re-evaluating what subjects suit them best all the way through their studies”. 

Dr Cook found that balancing workload, stress, enjoyment and motivation were the key factors influencing interest in high level maths.

Some found maths too hard, while others thought it was not challenging enough. Others hadn’t realised they needed maths, or could do it, until it was too late and had locked themselves out of pathways.  

A major theme was around the challenge of picking up maths again after time away.

“Maths methods in particular was found to be really hard to catch up on if classes were missed, so several students struggled if they missed time for reasons related to health or other subject pressures,” explains Dr Cook.  

“This highlights a serious flaw in the STEM pipeline: if a student has to drop down to a lower mathematics subject, they are abandoning the tertiary and career pathways that higher-level mathematics provides, all because of a broken arm.”

Along with parents, teachers were also important influences in ongoing decision-making processes, both implicitly through role modelling and explicitly through direct guidance, advice and rules.  

Dr Cooks says, “while streaming of who goes into what classes throughout schooling may be perceived as in the student’s interests, it also blocks students who discover an interest in and motivation for mathematics later to find they have ‘missed the boat’”.

“Known issues like a lack of maths teachers, university pre-requisites and the complexity of the ATAR system also have an effect.”

Dr Cook says there is no one solution on how to solve the crisis.

“Maths is important as it is needed in many university degrees, but also develops problem solving skills for the workforce, where engineering, mining, finance, health and data science require strong mathematical knowledge,” explains Dr Cook. 

“Setting up systems that allow and encourage more students to choose higher level maths would benefit all Australia.”