Your Kids Future Career Doesn’t Yet Exist…

This post is brought to you by Westpac, who is proud to offer Mathspace Essentials free for all Australians

Recently one of my kids came home from school and told me that, according to their teacher, their future career is a job that probably doesn’t even exist right now.

I let that sink in for a bit – about how much technology and life has changed over the last two decades, or even the last five years – and thought back to what it was like for me as a teen. We needed to have our careers all mapped out at age 15, in Year 10, so we could pick the right Year 12 subjects for Years 11 and 12. How on earth are kids meant to do that if their future jobs haven’t been invented yet?

The Australian Government anticipates that in the future there will be increased demand for highly-skilled workers.

Because of the ageing population, the health care and social assistance sector is tipped to experience the most growth by 2025, followed by professional, scientific and technical services and then education and training.

I have no experience working in any of those industries – but if the government is right, that’s where the jobs are going to be, and where we need to start preparing our kids for work in those industries – even if the jobs they’ll be doing in them can’t be defined right now!

Research indicates that 75% of the fastest growing occupations require knowledge in STEM skills. However, in NSW the number of students doing no maths in year 12 has tripled in the past ten years. Is this because kids are struggling with maths before they get to HSC level?

Why Maths Skills Are so Important:

Maths is a universal language – it is the basis for most sciences and all jobs in IT. Being maths-savvy will be an enormous advantage your child will have going into a future career – no matter what that is.

Building our kids’ capacity in maths and science will have positive effects on them when it comes time to select a career. But how can we help them if we, well, sucked at maths ourselves? The 2017 Westpac Numeracy Study found that 49 per cent of parents are concerned their lack of maths skills will have a negative impact on their children. Another 25 per cent of Aussie parents said they wouldn’t be comfortable helping their kids complete maths at a high school level!

I don’t know about you, but I struggle helping my kids with their maths homework NOW – and they aren’t even close to going into highschool yet!

My kids aren’t enthusiastic about maths at the best of times and I do worry that they’ll fall behind by the time they are deciding on HSC subjects. I considered getting a tutor, but like many family budgets these days, things are extremely tight, and I’m not sure how we can fit in an extra ongoing expense like that.

I’ve recently discovered the Mathspace Essentials maths program, which is free thanks to Westpac. Its content is aligned to the Australian curriculum from Years 3 to 12 and can be revised to any maths topic. Which is good because I couldn’t for the life of me remember if Pythagoras Theorem was something from my Year 7 maths class, or a Greek God from my Year 8 history class!

Kids using an app to do their homework is two-fold. They are both becoming more maths savvy and improving their skills on devices.

Why Should I Consider Using Mathspace to Teach My Kids Maths:

Hundreds of teachers across Australia have now replaced their textbooks with Mathspace Essentials. Why? Because the program is dynamic, engaging and interactive. Kids having fun whilst they learn is the best way to teach.

This amazing resource includes thousands of video lessons created by maths teachers and more than 30,000 interactive practice questions with step-by-step hints. Mathspace Essentials is available across different device formats – all you have to do to access it is create an account.