Australians are becoming less proficient and interested in maths, causing a serious decline in national maths standards. The Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) revealed that in 2018, Australia fell to the OECD average for maths for the first time according to PISA testing results. Using 2003 results as a benchmark, the decline amounts to around a years’ worth of schooling. PISA tests 15-year-old students in OECD countries on maths, science, and reading every three years. “We are a developed, wealthy Western country with justifiably high aspirations for our students, so we must take notice of these results,” ACER deputy CEO Sue Thomson said. The director of the Australian Mathematics Science Institute (AMSI), a national voice for maths in the country, noted that while Asian neighbours such as Taiwan and Hong Kong have maintained good results, it was a different story for Western countries, including Australia. “Both the relative and …