'Not just another face in the crowd': Report from SiMERR New South Wales

Abstract

More than 6.7 million people, or one third of all Australians, live in New South Wales. Of these, about 75% live in the 2.5% of the state referred to as the Great Metropolitan Region (GMR), comprising Sydney, the Illawarra and Lower Hunter regions (Department of the Environment and Conservation, 2003). The rest of the population live on the coastal strips outside the GMR (10%), and in the regional and rural areas of inland NSW (15%).The SiMERR NSW team visited four schools located in these regional and rural areas, interviewing teachers, parents and students about their perceptions of science, ICT and mathematics education. This chapter presents and discusses the results of these interviews, providing detailed and contextualised insights into what these groups identified as key issues affecting educational outcomes in the three subject areas.The chapter begins with a description of the schools, their communities and contexts. The three subsequent sections present and discuss the responses of teachers, students and parents to the interview question. The final section presents a summary of the findings, along with the SiMERR NSW team's reflections on those findings.