Crisis in Geoscience education

ANZIC’s response

Myra Keep, the Chair of our Educate Subcommittee discusses how the decline of geoscience education can be addressed.

In September 2025 The Australian Academy of Science launched the report Australian Science, Australia’s Future which identified geosciences as one of eight science disciplines in critical decline. This followed a position paper from The Australian Geoscience Council in 2024, and captured what many of us already knew. A number of articles have appeared in various publications in recent years (available here).

We decided to create a roadmap for how we might address the issues facing our science, and created a plan which we launched at the Australian Earth Sciences Convention in February 2026. ANZIC and the science it supports are a crucial element of any plans. The next step in the roadmap is a national (now international) Roadmap Discussion Forum to be held online on Wednesday 15 July, 10am-1pm AWST/12noon – 3pm AEST. We’re aiming to connect geoscience educators at all levels with teachers, learned academies and anyone else who is interested to start taking immediate action. 

Teachers are crucial to any Roadmap plans, and at Science Meets Parliament in March I was fortunate to meet Paula Taylor. Paula is the current President of The Australian Science Teachers Association, and in November last year received the Prime Ministers Prize for Science Teaching. When ANZIC was offered a very short notice position for a science teacher to attend the Ocean Core TRACX Program as a Teacher-Researcher and Curriculum Experience specialist I immediately thought of Paula. Her application was successful, and she will soon be off to College Station to participate. I can’t think of a better person in this role, and ANZIC will reap enormous benefits from having someone with her prodigious talents and networks espousing the joys of marine cores in science. We should aim to get marine cores into every school in Australia!

 Finally, we are taking the Roadmap story directly to teachers, and I will be presenting at the Conference of the Australian Science Teachers Association in July.  If you are interested in participating in the Roadmap Discussion Forum please contact earthroadmap@gmail.com.

Myra with Senator Michelle Ananda-Rajah (and the replica core!) at Science Meets Parliament. They discussed the importance of geoscience to sovereign capability and the Senator raised the issue just three weeks later at Senate Select Committee on Productivity.