The Search for Political Instant Gratification When it Comes to STEM Competence. (December 31, 2011)

 Review after review instituted by Australia's federal governments, of either persuasion, arrive at comparable conclusions that the nation is facing increasingly critical shortages of competent individuals in the sciences, technologies, engineering, and maths and stats (STEM).

They are also told that there are insufficient primary and secondary school teachers competent and enthusiastic in the subjects to engender active interest in the students in their charge.

And yet there is no interest to undertake a full renovation of the nation's public education system.

Why not?

Because it won't get the votes to win (or retain) government, so why bother. Just paper over the problems as cheaply as you can get away with, look concerned but work on what drives the voters, like BOAT PEOPLE and OFF-SHORE PROCESSING.

So now we have Cheryl Jones reporting in The Australian that Michael Gallagher, executive director of the Group of Eight, is calling for yet another review, this time of the $63.6 million program to attract more university graduates to careers in science and maths, and high school teaching in those disciplines because it's failing to attract sufficient individuals; in his words the current approach is "arbitrary and lacking supporting evidence".

What's being offered: "[S]ome graduates can get their university fee repayments cut by a maximum of about $1500 a year if they go on to work in eligible occupations in fields including biology, geology and high school maths and science teaching".

Ms Jones reports that her paper has got ATO data that to date 405 people have applied for the benefit for the 2009-10 income year of which 232 were approved, and she was told by Senator Evans' (federal Minister for Tertiary Education) office, "relatively few people are in a position to meet both the course eligibility and income-level criteria for the compulsory repayment of their HECS-HELP debt", but claimed, "A substantial increase in the benefit's take-up rate is expected over the next few years as the pool of eligible graduates grows; we also expect that awareness of the benefit will increase as students who commenced their course after the benefit was introduced flow through the system. Current projections are for approximately 1000 eligible applicants in 2010-11 and 1600 eligible applicants in 2011-12."

So is it churlish to recall that the government will drop science and maths from the national priority list from 2013, in a move that will push maximum fees for new students up to an estimated $8353 a year from $4691 a year, estimated to save the government just over $400 million over three years.

While it is generally agreed that placing maths and science courses on the priority list has not produced the results hoped for, the government -- rather than developing methods that would obtained useful student increases -- has simply grabbed the funding and reduced expenditure by $400 million.

It goes without saying that the opposition hasn't let out even a whimper of protest. Off course not, we are being terrorised by the invasion of THE BOAT PEOPLE, that's REALLY IMPOTANT.