How to put our children on the path to maths success

Poor maths performance is bad for businesses and can be catastrophic for individuals. Students who struggle with maths are more likely to disengage from school and be unemployed in adulthood. Three in four Australian employers say inadequate maths and literacy skills among their workers are a problem, causing challenges like financial miscalculations.

Poor maths also puts a handbrake on productivity. A Deloitte Access Economics study suggests that boosting maths achievement by 5 per cent in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Programme for International Student Assessment would add about $19 billion to Australia’s gross domestic product if it happened today.

Our new Grattan Institute report, The Maths Guarantee, sets out a 10-year strategy to put Australian children on a path to maths success.

Our research confirms that what happens in primary schools is key. Maths is highly cumulative, so strong foundations are critical. Getting children on the right track early will pay big dividends.

The research is clear about the best way to do this. Forget the fads. The most effective way to teach new maths concepts and skills is to do so explicitly and systematically.

This involves breaking maths concepts down into small chunks, explaining them clearly with examples, modelling what students need to know step by step, and giving students plenty of practice opportunities – including with times tables.

Teaching this way may sound straightforward, but for some teachers it will be a big shift from the games-based, maths-lite methods they were trained in – including the fanciful idea that students will discover new maths material for themselves through exploratory activities.

As part of our research for the report, we surveyed 1745 primary teachers across Australia. The results are sobering.

Less than half of teachers (43 per cent) say maths is timetabled into the day at their school. Just 46 per cent say that teachers at their school agree on what effective maths teaching entails. About a fifth of teachers (21 per cent) say they feel more worried about teaching maths than other subjects. And only 25 per cent thought that all students at their school were taught maths by teachers with strong knowledge of the subject.

This is not about blaming teachers. Unlike Singapore, Australia expects almost all primary teachers to teach maths – alongside many other subjects – regardless of their knowledge of the subject or their confidence to teach it. And Australia fails to equip teachers with the resources or training they need. This is unfair on teachers and on their students.

Here’s what should happen.

First, the federal government and all states and territories should commit to a 10-year “Maths Guarantee” strategy that puts Australia on a path to 90 per cent of children achieving maths proficiency.

Second, governments should create detailed and evidence-informed national guidance on how to teach primary maths well.

Third, governments should ensure that all schools have access to high-quality curriculum materials, catch-up learning programs, and quality assessment tools to monitor students’ progress. Establishing a genuinely independent body to quality-assure curriculum materials is a good place to start.

Fourth, governments should get serious about building teachers’ professional expertise. We need to dial up the quality of maths-focused professional learning. Building on successful reforms in England, Australia’s governments should establish 50 “Maths Hubs” across the country and create new primary maths micro-credentials.

Each Maths Hub would be located in a high-performing primary school that can act as a demonstration school, showcasing exemplary practice, delivering practical training to teachers in the area, and working intensively with lower-performing nearby schools.

The new micro-credentials should be up to two years in length, and provide robust training in explicit and systematic maths teaching, how to lead maths improvement, and how to support students who struggle in maths. The micro-credentials should be largely delivered outside school hours, to minimise teachers’ time away from the classroom. An annual $10 million scholarship pool should be created for teachers who sign up to the training.

And fifth, governments should strengthen their monitoring of schools, by mandating a research-tested early year’s numeracy screener and beefing up school and principal reviews.

These reforms are affordable. We calculate they would cost less than half of 1 per cent of current per-student funding – at only $67 per primary student per year.

The solution to Australia’s maths problem is within reach. Which of our political leaders will step up and seize it?