"Victoria to introduce new VCE maths subject" - The Age

[Sine]

Apparently there will be a new VCE maths subject in the near future. This subject being an extension of the current year 11 foundation maths and will be the "easiest" of the 4 math subjects. The article is here but it may be behind a pay-wall.

From the article:

A new, lower level maths subject will be offered to year 12 students in a bid to boost the number of senior students studying maths and respond to employer concerns about the numeracy skills of young job seekers.

Foundation maths is available now only to year 11 students and is the easiest VCE maths subject in that year. It covers topics such as data, measurement, and space, shape and design.

Students who study foundation maths can continue to further maths in year 12, which was the second most commonly studied subject among this year's graduates.

Under this proposal, students will be able to continue foundation maths in year 12, studying topics including empirical data, earth geometry, and practical applications of probability.

Consultation will continue next year and a revised study design is expected in 2021. This suggests the year 12 subject will not be in classrooms until at least 2022.

They also note:

The new subject will be carefully designed to discourage students from downgrading their maths study.

It will be interesting to see what they do here.

So what is everyone's thoughts on this?

[K888]

If this can give people maths skills that are applicable to life and gets more people staying a bit more engaged with maths, it has the potential to be great. Just depends how well it is designed!

[PhoenixxFire]

I don’t think that this is going to achieve what they want. I don’t think that all the current maths being too difficult is why people choose not to do any maths.

Having said that, it’ll be interesting to see what the curriculum is like.

[Aaron]

Fantastic. If it can promote maths as a discipline which is relevant in our everyday lives, that would be great!
As a schooling system we (at the moment broadly) have a perception problem with maths and I see this in my own teaching on a daily basis. If this at least shifts the mindset a little bit, perfect.

Unfortunately this negative perception is also the result of poor teaching practice at Years 7 to 10 (and perhaps even earlier) that contributes to those students not wanting to do maths at more senior levels. There's a fair few factors in play here but this is a good start.

[Sine]

That's interesting to hear! Just curious how many maths subjects are in the VCE curriculum right now, in QCE we have 4 I'm sure (essential, general, methods and specialist) do you guys reckon the content is similar between Methods and Specialist?? because from what I have seen on AN I think you guys also have Methods and Specialist as well, I just don't know what the CAS part is, is it CAS as in like technology free/active??

Currently, there are 3 VCE maths subjects. Further Maths, Mathematical Methods and Specialist Maths. The CAS part just refers to the CAS calculator that most people use - although VCAA have kind of dropped off that terminology.

Methods and Specialist cover different areas of mathematics with a bit of overlap e.g. Calculus.

[ashmi]

The idea of continuing Foundation Maths sounds interesting and I would love to see what the curriculum is like compared to the other maths. Let's just hope that it gets designed right to encourage people to continue basic mathematics!

Not sure how they are going to do this and separate students though. Since only 2 maths can be part of the primary 4, would adding another maths subject impact this? Also if they do introduce this, I'm quite curious if they will allow you to do all 4 maths. (Maybe a possible restriction in the future? Would become a very competitive subject unless there are some rules to enrol into it)

[Sine]

I'm wondering about how this will work. The idea of continuing Foundation Maths sounds interesting and I would love to see what the curriculum is like compared to the other maths. Let's just hope that it gets designed right to encourage people to continue basic mathematics!

Not sure how they are going to do this and separate students though. Since only 2 maths can be part of the primary 4, would adding another maths subject impact this? Also if they do introduce this, I'm quite curious if they will allow you to do all 4 maths. (Maybe a possible restriction in the future? Would become a very competitive subject unless there are some rules to enrol into it)

I am guessing the rules for contribution to ATAR will stay the same:
Maximum 2 maths subjects in the top 4
Maximum 3 maths subjects contributing to the ATAR

So you can do 4 maths - it would've been possible this year to do it (all three vce maths + uni maths) but 1 can't contribute to the atar

[Aaron]

Not sure how they are going to do this and separate students though. Since only 2 maths can be part of the primary 4, would adding another maths subject impact this?

Ideally Foundation Maths would not be taken by somebody who is able to and is willing to do a higher level mathematics such as Methods or Specialist. I continually say this but I firmly believe Further at the moment is targeted towards a more applied understanding of mathematics to real-world relevant situations and should not be taken by those doing Methods or Specialist. It would be the same view when Foundation is introduced. This is my own personal view and I am aware that many students do it for various reasons.

I would like to see some sort of restriction imposed. What this involves could be anybody's guess, but you are right... if people go and choose it purely for score-related reasons, it could very easily turn into Further 2.0.

[Jimmmy]

I really don't think a change like this can be made without some sort of change to the system, whether it means making math compulsory at VCE level or even it being mandatory in the top 4.

If that change is made, I think it will have the desired effect of giving those who may despise math a way to do it without heavy strain. Otherwise, I think it's only going to exacerbate the cause of stress for VCE students. If they are going to stop more capable maths students from doing it, the main method I can see is to heavily scale it, and then we're back to the cyclical issue of promoting scaling as a reason to, or not do a subject.

I'm not sure how much of a positive effect it'll have. A lot of people (not just the 'perceived' smart kids) say that Further is easy as it is, so what'll this one be?

[sweetcheeks]

It's a good idea and I'm glad to see that they are trying something. However, I'm not sure that it will get the result they are hoping for. In my experience, students who have decided they don't care about maths have made this decision well before they reach VCE and I don't believe, at least for most students who aren't taking maths, the difficulty is problem.

One of my teachers told us that she found that the attitude that parents have towards maths is one of the biggest contributing factors as to how the student perceives the subject. Some students who struggle with maths take up the attitude that they hate it or don't think its useful, because they ask their parents for help and the response will be something along the lines of 'I can't help you. I hate maths. I was never good at it. I haven't used it and I'm fine' (this has been said to her by multiple parents during parent/teacher interviews).