Re: The totally off-topic thread
As someone who has just qualified as a maths/IT teacher (and yes I can also teach science if need be), this is an interesting discussion, especially when I need to convince prospective schools that I can teach for the students we need in the future.
Note this is a long post; I'm not cutting it down. So move on if you so desire. Mods might also swoop in soon to split us off.
The whole Education system needs overhauling. We can't produce enough IT /science graduates. Billions went to private colleges for dodgy courses .
Daughter just finished HSC. Curriculum now gives marks for essay writing in physics and chemistry.
Congratulations to your daughter; HSC is stressful and not easy. I'm not sure whether your remark about essay writing in the sciences is a positive or negative observation. Also, I'm not sure what "essay writing" is, but as far as communication skills goes, it's something that I've noticed science people are not traditionally good at (except when communicating to their own kind).
Make maths compulsory to get ATAR in HSC. Get rid of the peripheral subjects in HSC
HSC Languages in particular should not be included in ATAR - study it sure but not part of ATAR except for English
The people that study obscure languages tend to be people that speak it natively.
This is a very contentious point of view. There are several people who think that whilst mathematics has societal importance, to force everyone to learn it at the HSC level (senior schooling) is not just. Some may argue that this is why Australia is regarded as a nation which performs "poorly" at mathematics (let alone science). Despite numeracy being touted as a cross-curricular skill in the Australian Curriculum, some people are convinced that "it takes all types" and if someone wants to focus on their goal which is patently non-mathematical and non-scientific, it is unfair to impose the maths obligation on them and thereby jeopardising their exit score potential.
I know that there are QLD secondary schools now that say that students
must study at least one subject of mathematics in senior school (even if it is prevocational mathematics, which does not contribute towards the OP or ATAR). This is not a strict rule from QCAA.
Make science the focus.
maths and science and computer science school teachers to be paid a lot more.
reduce funding for non science uni courses.
Introduce coding at school and make computer science the focus.
Thanks - I wish I would be paid more to teach maths, science or IT, but that isn't happening any time soon. In any case, there would be questions raised on what would be "a lot more", then also balanced against whether that would result in a glut / imbalance of STEM teachers (i.e. why would you be another kind of teacher if that doesn't pay as well) who would either be both saturating the system or may not be afforded by the respective schools. It may also result in internal resentment at schools of STEM teachers (i.e. potential conflicts between non-STEM and STEM staff).
Some non-science faculties at some universities would argue that their funding for their courses is already considerably strained (why do you think most humanities courses have far less contact hours compared to science courses). Let's not also forget that for the most part, tertiary instruction is not a profit centre; it is a cost centre. Universities on the whole make far more money and justify their existence from research outputs (papers, professors, PhDs, products or patents, etc.). No initiative nor distinct position on the federal level does anything to lessen the problems in these arenas, and if anything the situation is becoming more strained and the government is not interested in taking affirmative nor collaborative action.
Coding has already been proposed in the Australian Curriculum for ICTE all the way at the Foundation level, i.e. preparatory and year 1. There's a risk to the whole teaching coding thing; it's great but we need to make sure we actually produce programming-literate people, not just code monkeys (that kind of contempt is why corporations feel comfortable enough shifting their services to India).
Politicians thought that that making laptops available to school students was smart - all we are creating are Windows and Mac users. Not creators of code.
I'd argue that it's not even creating a computer literate generation. Maybe that's a failure of the instruction side, but from my practicum experience as an IT teacher, I was flabbergasted.
"The files you need can be found under this folder on the LMS [an online learning portal]. Download the files to a folder on your personal drive, make sure that the .html file is in the base folder and the .css file is in the css folder."
Simple enough instructions, I would have thought. This can easily take 10 minutes to sort out for a class of 18. These are grade 10 students at a green leafy suburb private school, all of them have their own laptops and I'm sure most of them can use their phones well enough for all the whiz bang what not. Some of them didn't even know how to create a new folder, know how to name and rename files (let alone have a systematic file naming convention), know what a file extension is and what effect is has, move and copy files between folders, navigate a folder structure (e.g. when saving a downloaded file), or how to check for version currency using, e.g. the modified date and so on. It didn't matter whether they were using Windows or MacOS (and I don't know why, but if anything the MacOS students seem more confused on how to achieve these simple tasks than the Windows users).
What is a taskbar? What is a radio button? What do you mean fill out the "Description field"? Ever thought about right-clicking to bring up a context menu? Tried Googling for an answer to your question?
It's mind boggling.
thats the other end of the pipeline. Science needs to be the focus of funding at both ends
I've been saying this for a while: it's no good focussing just on school or just on university. If the federal government wants to produce a STEM smart army (not literally the defence forces) of Australians, then this must be a
life cycle support, right through to the career stage. Producing a truckload of STEM graduates who can't find any jobs is no good to anyone and is certainly no good to Australia; you can't just blame economic cycles on it, and the baby boomers have to stop using the simple argument that you simply "shut up, suffer and work harder, you over-entitled cretins".
One thing we dont need is more science graduates; there isn't enough funding for those of us that already exist. Approximately 8% of grants submitted to NHMRC in any one year get funded. Thats 92% of people that didnt get money to fund their research.
The funding bodies as a whole - NHMRC and ARC - are both over saturated; there's no getting around the truth on that. I don't know what the nominal funding proportion targets are, but I do know that the pool is not expanding proportional to the applications and anyone who is getting a grant is not usually getting as much as they want.
The methods of selecting successful grants is heavily biased towards skewed methods or disincentivising emerging or early career researchers. For example, many ARC grant applications wouldn't even get a look unless the chief investigator was a professor. To have to find a "random" professor on campus and for him/her to consent to be the CI on an application that they otherwise would have nearly nil participation in is about as superficial as it gets.
I think you will find there is actually a lot more to those subjects than just focusing on formulae.
I agree, however the way that we are passing students at the moment, focussing on formulae will get them through.
In fact, I sat an interview for a UK teaching agency and one of the interviewers was explaining aspects of the UK education system, and he said there it's all about results, results, results. If that means you teach students to regurgitate facts to ace a test, that's what it takes. I don't know if that horrifies anyone as a parent, but I'm sure you're also all pacified if your child comes home with an A, no matter how they got it.
In fact, remember that pretty much in all standards right through to tertiary, you don't actually have to be
good or
excellent at what you are studying; you only need to
pass. In many cases, this means 50%. Now companies aren't falling apart necessarily due to inherently incompetent graduates, but it seems strangely incongruent that we seem to want to set standards and make educational reforms that describe a student achieving at essentially what is an A standard.
but for some reason she didn't get her results when everyone else did yesterday.... 
. I think The RealTMA could offer some helpful hints 
.
