How do we fix the alarming decline in numeracy among young Australians? The answer is to catch them when they are very young. So it is reassuring that a targeted review of the national maths curriculum, announced at last Friday’s meeting of education ministers, will focus on the first three years of school.
For two decades, Australia’s maths results have fallen further and more consistently than those of almost any other country in international rankings. We’ve seen NAPLAN achievement flatlining despite huge funding increases following the Gonski review. Nearly half of 15-year-olds aren’t proficient in maths.
Getting in early: kindergarten students at The Entrance Public School, which is among schools tackling the numeracy challenge with explicit teaching strategies.Credit: Louise Kennerley
The consequences ripple across the economy and society. We graduate roughly half as many engineers per capita as our peer countries. Girls underperform boys by a wider margin than almost any other country. By early high school, about half of students say they dislike the subject. And about a third report they experience anxiety with maths.
These are the downstream outcomes from too many children not getting a strong start in maths at school. So the first years at school are the right place to focus rather than reopen the entire curriculum. It is proportionate and pragmatic. With the previous 2021 update to the national curriculum still bedding down in many classrooms, there’s little appetite for another root-and-branch rewrite.
It’s in the early years where improved clarity really counts. But to make this curriculum review count, it must bring better alignment between what to teach, how to teach and how to assess early maths.
First, the curriculum must put foundational number ideas at the centre. In the first years of school, time is precious, so it must be spent on the building blocks children actually use. In too many classrooms, long stretches go to colouring patterns or naming and sorting shapes – in part because the curriculum hasn’t clearly signalled where the big learning gains can be best made.
A tighter emphasis must be made on the foundations on which everything else follows. That means ensuring children can count with confidence, can quickly recognise small quantities, be able to understand their tens and ones, and can add and subtract small numbers quickly without relying on counting with their fingers. Underpinning the curriculum content and intent must be to make small numbers feel familiar and automatic, so later steps have something solid to stand on.
Young children learn maths best when ideas are explained plainly, shown in small steps and practised straight away.
Second, teaching guidance should prioritise explicit instruction. An early draft of the last curriculum review was revised after a public letter from experts warned against its heavy reliance on “discover it yourself” teaching approaches. Young children learn maths best when ideas are explained plainly, shown in small steps and practised straight away. That method is not grounded in old-fashioned traditionalism but in the science of how humans learn maths.
And we shouldn’t be shy about teaching for a quick recall of key facts. Just as learning letter-sounds helps with reading, knowing basic number facts frees up mental space to solve problems.
Fluency isn’t about rote-learning, but about ensuring students have mastered content and procedures so they can be efficient in tackling more complex maths.
Third, assessment and the curriculum must be better aligned – particularly for early detection of children at risk through frequent, brief, formative health checks that give teachers clearer signals to provide timely support. Current tools for assessing children’s maths don’t measure the skills that matter most, are too time-consuming (usually delivered one-on-one rather than in small groups), and they often check only whether an answer is right, not how efficiently a child can produce it.
In recent years, the Centre for Independent Studies has made the case for universal early numeracy screening – a short, efficient check of key foundations to spot and support students at risk early. Within the next year, state governments are expected to introduce this screening approach in all schools.
Our Early Number Sense Screener for Australia (ENSSA) has been trialled this year in about 200 schools. This research is already showing strong potential to identify children at risk early – and to provide informed guidance for how teachers can best support these students and to monitor their progress.
Turning around Australia’s disappointing maths results won’t happen overnight. But if this new review puts early number sense at the centre of the curriculum and embeds this within the new regime of numeracy screening, it will be a big win for the education system – and more importantly, for students.
Glenn Fahey is program director in education policy at the Centre for Independent Studies.
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