The elephant in the room is gender.

If, for some reason, our sports programs suddenly began to exclude or dismiss the concerns of tall people, then we would expect basketball scores to suffer rather than football.

Why is mathematics in particular suffering? Because boys are falling behind in schools. We are still doing ok in subjects where the focus is on reading things, writing things, and feeling things because those subjects have plenty of students who are not boys to keep the averages up.

Easy back to basics
kinda to primary
maths English writing etc
year 6-10 more advanced stuff science etc
11-12 uni and job preparation
same criteria across all Australia
Easy

Are you suggesting John, that we can improve it on current hopeless practice, or actually bring it back to what it was 40 years ago.

To do the latter I'm afraid you are going to have to stop the women's libbers who have e taken over education, & feminised the curriculum.

Where once we asked math & physics students to show an understanding of the principles, & use the math & physics to solve problems, we now have multiple choice questions, & ridicules questions like describe a number. To manage to make a literary subject from math is really the crowning achievement of the feminists in downgrading the hard science subjects.

If you can get math back to requiring reasoning ability, rather than typing ability, you may start to get somewhere.

When we have kids with very high achiever passes in year 12 math B, who can't handle the math in an apprentiship, previously handled by 15 year old kids with just intermediate certificate math, you know we have a very long climb back. The feminists will be running interference all the way. The last thing they want is for the boys to regain ascendency in science/math.

Reintroducing basic classical geometry instruction (ie: the easier parts of Euclid's Elements) at primary school would be a good place to start to improve math and hard sciences education. This is because is shows what a mathematical proof is and how to do them in a very accessible way. Also solving geometry problems encourages intellectual creativity and teaches the beauty of systematic logical reasoning.

Hasbeen, is there any evidence behind your claims? Or did you just base them on stereotypes and/or a certain episode of The Simpsons?

Three kids recently gone through the math A, B & C, & Physics farce at a 1700 student state high school. 15 years of running the P&C textbook hire scheme at that school.

2 years of taking kids to Queensland University of Technology every Saturday for Math coaching, when teachers who couldn't do the subject told me I was teaching then old hat stuff, which was now wrong for gods sake. Evidently math has changed, particularly for teachers who can't do it.

A mate, ex High school teacher, who now runs remedial math courses at 2 TAFE colleges, for kids who can't handle the math required for trade courses, after Very High Achiever results at year 12 high school.

Having forced the school to return kids exam papers, so we could see where they needed more help. The school resisted as they were too damn lazy to provide new test papers each year. It turned out they had been using the same tests for 6 years, & denying the kids access to their marked papers. There is a real suspicion that many papers were never actually marked. Also a real suspicion none of the teachers could write a math C exam paper.

I could go on Aidan, but that should do. You wouldn't be a teacher now would you?