Degenerate maths and the mystery of the disappearing report

On Friday, January 29, the Cairns Post had a monster headline on the front page: “We Suck at Maths”. The sub headline was “two out of three FNQ schools aren’t making the grade”.

The basis for that candid headline was the “national test” results at Years 3, 5, 7 and 9; which showed that in mathematics local children were doing rather worse than the national average. Since then there have been articles in some Far North Queensland papers by individual schools claiming to be better than average and really good.

More than 20 years ago at the high school where I worked we had a peculiar Year group that was notable for the fact that almost all the gifted students were lazy. The results for a maths exam in Year 12 were poor. In a corridor I met a very gifted lad from a class I did not teach who I knew had only got about 70 per cent. I told him that his result was feeble. He defended himself by saying “but I was top”. True, he was. In a foul temper I yapped that “even a pile of horse droppings has one turd at the top”.

That is the big problem with the “national tests”. It compares students and groups of students just within Australia. However it is a brute statement of fact that Australian students are extremely weak compared to those in many other countries. International tests Trends in International Maths and Science Study (TIMSS) show that the standard of maths in Australia is at best very weak. Not only are we beaten by the “big boys” Taiwan, Japan, Singapore and Korea who are out of sight better than Australia, but we are also beaten by a mass of countries such as Hungary, Bosnia Herzegovina, Malta and Lithuania.

But there’s more: a student who does well on the TIMSS test is listed as being “Advanced”: 45 per cent of Taipei students reach “Advanced”. In Australia 6 per cent achieve “Advanced”, in Queensland “the Vacuum State” only a disgraceful 3 per cent.

But there’s even more: in algebra the “gateway to educational opportunity” the global average on Year 8 TIMSS was 500. Australian students managed 471.

The national tests, called NAPLAN, when first released a year or so ago showed that Queensland students are, overall, the weakest in the country except for Northern Territory. The Queensland government employed the Australian Council of Education Research (ACER) to examine the situation in detail. In secondary maths in 1964 Queensland was top, in 1978 top again, but in the years since then we have oscillated between 4th and 5th. As the report puts it, the decline represented “more than two years learning”.

Contemplate the implications - on entry to Year 11 a student’s grasp of mathematics nowadays is roughly that of an exiting Year 8 student 30 years ago. The line peddled by apologists for the Vacuum State’s results is that the children are younger than in other States. True, but of dubious relevance. The students were just as young in the 70s but were the best in Australia. On a personal level the decline means that my children went through when Queensland was top, now my grandchildren go through when we are weak as water. We now peddle degenerate maths to the unsuspecting students.

That outcome was as expected. For years now, when tutoring Year 11/12 students in Mathematics I use old Year 8 and Year 9 textbooks many times every week without exception.

The fact is that maths in all schools in Queensland is pitiably weak by international standards. Is doing well in a contest where all the competitors are weak really anything to be proud of?

The “league tables” based on the NAPLAN tests are just a contest to see who is the top turd. Agreed it is better to be an upper level turd than a low level one, but you are still something that has fallen out of the back end of a horse.

So what is the cause of the dreadful decline in maths in Queensland, a decline that is at all levels, in all school types and in all geographical areas of the State? In other words, what is the horse that has dropped this pile on our children? It must be a state-wide body and it must influence all schools everywhere without exception.

Only one body meets those conditions: it is the organisation that produces all subject syllabi and all assessment programs, the Queensland Studies Authority, QSA, (and its pitiable predecessor up to Year 10, the Queensland Schools Curriculum Council, QSCC). It has been evident for more than 20 years that the weakened maths syllabus up to Year 10 exit would inevitably result in a serious decline in standards at Year 10 exit. Well, it has happened. All we are left with is a pile of horse droppings and the NAPLAN competition to determine who is boss turd. That issue gets wide publicity and in the process obscures the far more important overall degenerate condition of the subject.

Only Parliament has the power to rectify the problem - a fact that I have emphasised for years. Candidly I think that QSA should be sacked for incompetence at least. It is beyond me that Parliament is supine on this issue, especially as education takes by far the largest slice of the State budget. It makes no difference what side of politics I talk to, all they can see is buildings or retention rates or the public/private divide and other second order issues.

But there is the possibility that no official group, QSSC or QSA or, crucially, Parliament itself really knew that a problem existed. Which leads to the corny old question “what did they know and when did they know it?” They had the results of the sequence of very poor TIMSS results. Those results were ignored. Presumably international data was not good enough! Would home grown Queensland data have been more influential and stirred people out of their smug lethargy?

In 1999 the then Queensland Board of Senior Secondary Studies did some careful analysis of the condition of maths at the end of Year 10. It was called Maths as a Foundation. Although the Board were then only responsible for Years 11 and 12, they were the only group that were capable of doing the proper research needed because the QSCC had never done any assessment ever, had no relevant skills, and were useless.

Among other things, Maths as a Foundation found that there were huge differences in standards across the schools, even for those students who were all seen by the schools as performing at the highest possible level. There was overwhelming evidence that performance in applying mathematical techniques, e.g. algebra, on entry to Year 11 was abysmally low even for classes taking the highest levels of maths in Year 11. They also commented on the implications for all other subjects and to the inevitable problems for syllabus construction for later Years.

The report also reproduced a number of samples of student work with an emphasis on algebra. Some of those samples are astonishingly, appallingly weak. Such samples show scant grasp of algebraic concepts and weak technical skills - and these were from Very High Achievement students.

A copy of the draft report forwarded to me chimed well with what many school principals were saying to me in writing as I worked for my PhD thesis on “participation in rigorous maths and science”. They repeatedly asserted that middle schooling maths and science, especially algebra, was very weak and messy. As one principal put it, in respect of maths and science up to Year 10 “the Department is dragging its feet”.

A few years ago at a QSA meeting over changes in senior schooling I raised the issue of the report Maths as a Foundation, because the problems identified in that must still exist. QSA staff claimed that they had never heard of it and could not find it. It is not on the QSA website and, to my knowledge never has been.

Very puzzled, I wondered if the report had never been finalised. However, late last year, while moving house, I found a clean copy of the final report Maths as a Foundation. It had been finalised after all. Now, the QSA took over everything from both the old Board and from the pathetic QSCC. It is vanishingly unlikely that no copies of that report exist in the QSA.

So the QSCC and subsequently the QSA must have certainly known ten years ago that there was extremely serious trouble in maths up to the end of year 10 and they must have known the problems that would occur when writing later subject syllabi.

However, it was not just the QSCC and the QSA who had copies of the report, a report that should have got Parliament sitting up and taking notice. The copy I have in front of me indicates that the report was put in the Queensland Parliamentary Library on July 23, 2001. So the information was definitely available to Parliamentarians.

Clearly no minister or shadow minister or their respective “Sir Humphries” have considered that the catastrophic decline in maths (and allied numerical sciences) education was worth worrying about. None of them has woken up to the fact that the State-wide nature of the decline makes it certain that the problem lies at the centre i.e. within the QSCC and the QSA, both of which are creatures of Parliament. Parliament set up the QSA up and has trusted them. QSCC and QSA have overseen a terrible decline in the education our children receive in an increasingly globalised world.

That decline is not restricted to Years 1 to 10. New QSA syllabi/assessment systems for maths and numerical sciences in Years 11 and 12 mark a drastic decline in standards and the introduction of ludicrous assessment systems at those levels also. Teachers are naturally reluctant to complain in public but a facility has been set up to allow them to make comments in private. Some idea of the perceived problems can be found here. Read them please. These are the thoughts of teachers at the coal face. You will probably be shocked and appalled by what is going on right now.

A total reconstruction of subject syllabi and the non numerate, totally unclear, voodoo driven assessment systems is essential - if there is to be improvement. That is a necessary but not sufficient requirement for improvement; without it all is vain.

The Parliament must act, act drastically and act now. Procrastination and jargon excuses are unacceptable and irresponsible.

When will Parliament act? Do they even care? They certainly must know.

Hope springs eternal, but it is only a feeble flicker nowadays.