The Sydney Morning Herald – Anita Collins
“Is the answer to the complex issue of raising literacy and numeracy standards just about giving more “prime learning” time and emphasis in every school day to these areas? And if it is, why aren’t we seeing the results of these changes schools and education departments have already made in NAPLAN and PISA scores? In Bill Shorten’s reply speech to the Budget 2015 this month, he put forward Labor’s intention to sponsor 100,000 students to do STEM degrees, which are science, technology, engineering and maths degrees at university level. This is with the intention of strengthening the knowledge economy of Australia, to continue the impressive record of innovations and discoveries that can be attributed to Australian educated and supported researchers. So how do these two issues of literacy and numeracy standards and STEM-focused university degrees come together? The answer is in the general cognitive capacity of our population. In order to ensure the capacity for there to be 100,000 students willing and capable to undertake STEM degrees at a tertiary level, we need to have children achieving and maybe even exceeding the required standards for literacy and numeracy from the very beginning of their education.”(more)