Access: the Challenge and Resources

It is a difficult challenge to give secondary school students an equitable access to current research ideas. Australia has some 2300 high schools widely scattered within 8 separate education systems. In NSW there are 814 high schools and what may be taught in them -- the science syllabi -- have just been rewritten, replacing the 1982 versions (a review every 10-15 years). What is taught depends on options selected by the teacher and the ideas are filtered through the understanding of the teacher. Only about one in six science teachers has a degree with a physics major.

To meet this challenge, the resources in Australian astronomy are considerable. The Anglo-Australian Observatory and the Australia Telescope National Facility together employ 40 professional astronomers. One third (14) of Australian universities have 114 astronomers among their staff, and do research with postgraduate students: all 14 universities teach undergraduate astronomy courses -- six or seven have first-year courses. In an average year, the research output is some 500 scientific papers and books (Ekers et al., 1995).

This paper describes ways that the Astronomical Society of Australia (ASA), can assist secondary schools in stimulating curiosity by providing access to the current research and concepts.

á© Copyright Astronomical Society of Australia 1997