Canberra year 12 students Emma and Taylor both dropped maths after year 11.
“I got tired of it,” Taylor said.
But he said he would not have been “opposed” to studying maths for a further year, had it been mandatory.
“I don’t think I would have been hard-pressed if they said that it was necessary.”
Emma agreed, saying she would have been “fine with it” had she had no option.
“I just dropped it because there were other classes that I wanted to do more, but if I had to, I wouldn’t have been against it,” she said.
A recent review commissioned by the ACT Board of Senior Secondary Studies is now urging the ACT government to make maths a compulsory subject for students in years 11 and 12, arguing it will lead to better long-term outcomes.
The recommendation by the Mathematics Advisory Committee was made based on data showing maths is linked to higher employment rates and increased earnings over the average lifetime.
Data from 2022 showed 43 per cent of ACT students performed below the National Proficient Standard in mathematical literacy and reasoning, a discussion paper published by the committee said.
It also found that nationally, between 27 per cent and 35 per cent of students lacked “proficiency in key areas such as problem-solving, digital literacy and financial literacy”.
Subject choice can reinforce ‘social inequalities’
The committee said in its report that the ACT’s “individualised” senior secondary system could be reinforcing social inequality by allowing students in college to drop maths.
“Student subject choice is not simply a matter of individual preference. It is influenced by social background, gender, school culture and resourcing, and teacher attitudes,” the committee said.
“This can lead to the reinforcement of social inequalities and different subject choices often lead to different outcomes.”
The committee said this freedom to select courses that aligned more with students’ personal interests posed “both opportunity and risk”.
“For example, not choosing mathematics may make access to pathways in many areas, including commerce, sciences and health less accessible,” the paper said.
The committee said this included adverse impacts for female students, who were under-represented in subjects such as science and maths despite outnumbering males in higher education.
The paper’s authors said research showed this contributed to wage inequalities between males and females in the labour market, while also leading to a shortage of workers with “math-related skills” while demand for that expertise was growing.
The committee concluded that if mathematics were made a requirement, any social pressure not to engage with it would be countered.
Maths ‘equips students with essential skills’, committee says
The committee said the skills most in demand globally were underpinned by an understanding of maths, namely “creative and analytical thinking, technological literacy, and lifelong learning”.
“Indeed, mathematical literacy is essential for interpreting data and making informed decisions, both in personal finance and broader societal contexts,” the paper said.
“This capacity is relevant to personal lives, citizenship and careers.
“The arithmetic facility required to manage finances has relevance for many students, who will become involved in small businesses or entrepreneurial activity as tradespeople, artists, and retailers.”
They also argued that a level of proficiency with maths better enabled people to identify misleading statistics and data, referencing recent research from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
In that 2024 paper, the researchers said being able to detect disinformation “involves building media, digital, and information literacy to help ensure the public can participate in the information environment with a discerning view and critical approach”.
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