Journalist: What is the latest with this subject (STEM)?

Karen Andrews: There is certainly a lot of debate happening now in the Parliament about science technology, engineering and maths, known as the STEM skills.

I am delighted that debate is happening because it’s an issue that we have to address, because we know that whilst we can’t predict the exact jobs of the future we do know what skills are going to be needed.

Those skills are going to be data analysis, statistical analysis and computer coding.

Each of those skills requires at least a maths basis, and a science basis would also be very helpful for jobs of the future, which will require those three skills or possibly more.

There does need to be an ongoing and a broad debate about how we are going to address what is a known skills shortage and a decline in maths and science across the board here in Australia.

The proposal by the Education Minister Christopher Pyne to work with the States and Territories to ensure maths and science subjects are taken up to years 12 is something we need to take seriously and give consideration too.

English is a subject that is mandatory. You have to take that up to year 12. Given that we know there is a skill shortage in maths and science, consideration should be given to making sure that at the very least, a maths subject is taken all the way through to year 12.

Journalist: Isn’t that the case in Queensland high schools now?

Karen Andrews: There is a requirement for maths to be taken, but it doesn’t have to be taken for all four semesters of year 12.

Journalist: And that’s what you are looking at?

Karen Andrews: Yes. I think there is some consistency that we need to look at across the States. Then of course as you go on to universities I think that we need to start looking at the prerequisites for some of the courses.

For example, for engineering courses at all universities in Australia you don’t have to of done both maths to get into engineering.

What that does is create an issue for students who may well in Queensland get a high OP, sufficiently high to get them into engineering, but they don’t have the maths base they need to be able to do those courses.

So they get entry to the course and then they will have to do bridging courses to bring their skills up to where they need to be.

Clearly if it was mandatory to do a maths subject through to year 12 you would go a long way to addressing the skills of our secondary students going on to tertiary education.

Journalist: Does this then mean that the Government has concerns about the quality of maths and science teachers, or the number of suitably qualified maths and science teachers available to our high schools, but also about the quality of graduates coming out of degree courses, such as engineering?

Karen Andrews: We know that there is a lot of work that needs to be done in this space and it’s a complex issue and there is not just the one solution to it.

With regards to the skills of our teachers absolutely we should be making sure we are attracting the best and the brightest students to take up careers in education.

We also need to make sure that our science and maths teachers have a love for the subject that they are teaching. That, that is where they want to be and they have the skills and the confidence to go out and to teach our children maths and science.

Certainly, attracting the right teachers to the science and maths field is one of our key priorities.

Journalist: Does that mean the Government has concerns about the quality of current teachers and/or engineers similar professionals?

Karen Andrews: What we need to do is work with what we have got. I have had many discussions with teachers to make sure the resources are available to assist them with teaching particularly in the science and the maths field.

There are many outreach programmes some run by CSIRO, some run by Questacon and they are all there to assist teachers with their professional development and to give them the resources they need to teach these subjects.

Sadly, some of these teachers haven’t always had the opportunity to have their skill levels where they need to be in maths and science. Many teachers are putting their hands up and want to access all of the resources so that they can engage with the students and develop the skills that they need and pass them onto the students.

Journalist: Is there any sense of the size of the need for suitably qualified teachers in our tertiary sector?

Karen Andrews: I think there is varying figures at the moment. I don’t know that’s been firmly established.

To my knowledge there has not been a skills audit across the board in the education sector to look at what those skills are. We do know that there is a shortage of maths and science teachers.

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