Mathematics skills out for the count

Two recent articles in the Daily Telegraph, ”Students in almost 60 percent of high schools taught by unqualified teachers” and “Mathematics skills out for the count“, highlight two key (and related) concerns in Australian mathematics education: the continuing shortages of skilled maths teachers in high schools (with one in five schools having at least one maths teacher [...]

Federal government awards $2 million for Improving Mathematics Education in Schools project

As reported today on the Funneled Web, the Federal Minister for Education, Julia Gillard, has announced a $2 million grant to fund the “Improving Mathematics Education in Schools” project, an initiative run by AMSI in collaboration with industry and teachers to promote mathematics education and awareness of mathematics career opportunities, particularly in low-income areas. See [...]

Message from AMSI regarding proposed cuts at Victoria University

The new director of the Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute, Geoff Prince, has written an open letter to the Vice Chancellor and President of Victoria University, Elizabeth Harman, regarding the proposed severe cuts in the mathematics and statistics departments (from 8.5 FTE to 4.5 FTE) through targeted. (We posted about these cuts in a previous post.) [...]

Jurassic Quark

Something non-serious for a change: CSIRO’s contribution to a performance entitled “CSIRO” for the 2009 University of Sydney Science Revue:  “Jurassic Quark”:

Nobel Prize Laureates

Among this year’s Nobel Prize Laureates is the Australian-American molecular biologist Elizabeth Blackburn, currently at UC San Francisco, for her work with Carol Greider and Jack Szostak on their work on telomeres and their role in protecting chromosomes.  In the US, Blackburn is perhaps best known for being controversially dismissed from President George W. Bush’s [...]