Every primary school should have at least one specialist science teacher, according to Australia's chief scientist, Professor Ian Chubb. The idea is part of a strategy to address a serious decline in Australia's research and technical abilities and prevent the economy being weakened by a lack of critically important skills.
Mandatory study of science and the establishment of a new Australian Innovation Board also feature in the strategy, which identifies competitiveness, education, research and international engagement as areas in urgent need of attention.
Chubb said science and innovation were the keys to boosting productivity, creating better jobs, enhancing competitiveness and growing the economy.
'Science is infrastructure and it is critical to our future. We must align our scientific effort to the national interest, focus on areas of particular importance or need and do it on a scale that will make a difference to Australia and a changing world,' he said.
Australia has been criticised for leaving to chance the future of its core science and maths skills. The country has no federal science minister and is the only OECD country without a national science strategy.
Research shows that 40% of Year 7 to Year 10 maths classes are not taught by a qualified maths teacher.
Entities 0 Name: Australia Count: 4 1 Name: OECD Count: 1 2 Name: Australian Innovation Board Count: 1 3 Name: Ian Chubb Count: 1 4 Name: Chubb Count: 1 Related 0 Url: http://ift.tt/1qVDKpb Title: How The Digital Revolution Can Fix Scientific Publishing And Speed Up Discoveries Description: Editor's note: Daniel Marovitz is CEO of Faculty of 1000. Prior to that, he was the CEO and co-founder of buzzumi, a cloud, enterprise software company. Scientific, Technical, and Medical (STM) publishing is big business. It generates $19 billion in revenue per year, the majority of which is earned by a few powerful publishers that enjoy profit margins of up to 40 percent.
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