AMSI's Executive Officer Tells It Like It Is. (April 8, 2008)

The executive officer of the Australian Mathematical Science's Institute has for many years worked tirelessly to further the cause of mathematics in Australia.

In 2000  she estimated that about 40% of teachers of  mathematics instructing students in their first year of Australian secondary schooling were under-qualified. While the estimate was based on a small data sample the figure has never been challenged then or since by the Department of Education, Science and Training or its current successor.

Since then matters have only deteriorated, alarmingly so when Australia is compared with its OECD cohort.

In a contribution to Professor Tao's petition to the University of Southern Queensland she writes:

 

Where do I start? Those of you who know me, know that I have been battling in many ways for the mathematical sciences in Australia for a long time. So let me put USQ in context and stress how really important this issue is.

Back in the mid 80s I was happily working with teachers on issues related to language and mathematics. Then in the late 80s bureaucrats decided that a particularly nasty version of a national mathematics curriculum meant that the various education departments didn’t need specialists like me helping schools because this document solved all. About this time I got involved at the national level with the politics of mathematical sciences in Australia. After all, it’s no good writing about inequity in mathematics education for students from indigenous or other backgrounds who are being failed by the system if there are fundamental problems with teacher supply, university offerings and a host of other things. So here I am, 20 years on and should be retired, still fighting a battle for what should be the right of every young Australian, a first-rate mathematics education.

The battle to save mathematics and statistics at USQ is much bigger than a single university but winning it is fundamental to winning equity, access, social justice and social inclusion for many young Australians. If we don’t fix the problem in the universities, we don’t have teachers and the teachers we do have go to the schools of the privileged.

There is only one mathematician left at Charles Darwin University in the Northern Territory which is home to many of our indigenous people. It is hard enough for young people from any remote community to relocate for their education but harder still for those tied closely to their families and land.

I keep doing what I can. I’ve been helped by many wonderful mathematical scientists over the years who don’t seem to mind that I’m not actually a mathematician. I’m technically an organic chemist according to a rather dated piece of paper. I also have some good genes for this - my father was a politician.

Garth Gaudry was a mathematical mentor to Terry. I particularly want to acknowledge the wonderful support and help Garth has given me since we first met in the late 80s. There are others too numerous to mention but Garth was the first to assist me into the politics of all this. So I do now have some pretty good political connections and some good media people to call on.

The formation of the Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute (AMSI) has given me a base to support all our members and the mathematical community more generally. But we have to re-build that community. Not just at USQ by at Charles Darwin, Flinders and others. We need to expand it in the bigger universities who have also suffered greatly in the last ten years or so.

USQ is the tip of a very large ice-berg. There should be no compromise over this. USQ should be expanding its offerings, not closing them off. As should every other university in Australia.

This is not just about mathematics and statistics or research in universities. This is a fundamental equity and social inclusion issue and university administrators across Australia have an obligation to the nation to help solve it, not make it worse. This includes those at USQ.