disallowed/education/australia-facing-urgent-maths-teacher-shortage-after-30-years-of-inaction-20190508-p51l5l.html
Fewer than one in four Australian high school students have a qualified maths teacher and the situation is about to get worse, with a projected boom in student numbers following a 30-year decline in the supply of new maths-trained teachers.
About 75 per cent of students in years 7 to 10 are already being taught maths for at least one year by a teacher not trained in the subject area and the situation is set to worsen, with an expected 650,000 extra students across the country by 2026.
Decisions to become a maths teacher often start with studying high-level maths in year 12, and the proportion of year 12 students doing these subjects fell 32 per cent between 1996 and 2014, according to the report.
Furthermore, only about 62 per cent of schools in NSW, Victoria and Queensland were offering the highest-level maths courses last year, the report has found.
