Many parents will be worried about international test results showing Australian girls falling behind boys in maths. I think we have to be cautious about the methodology behind these tests.
A sample of students in years four and eight were given two tests about half-an-hour long.
The results appear to show boys performing better than girls. But perhaps it just shows that boys are better at maths exams than girls.
Does testing maths in this way favour someone who thinks and acts in a certain way, a way that is typically associated with how boys behave at school?
In her book X + Y: A Mathematician's Manifesto for Rethinking Gender, US mathematician Eugenia Cheng uses category theory to examine different traits or behaviours that influence learning.
These results also raise the question of whether we have enough maths teachers. The answer is no, we don't.
Congressive learners work with other people to come to a mutual and a global view of what's going on. Ingressive learners try to go through things by themselves and work out the best way to get from A to B. I think there is a correlation between ingressive learning and boys, while girls tend to learn in congressive ways.
I tend to think that education at a high school level favours people who think in an ingressive way - and testing in constrained exam conditions favours this way. You work quickly, don't care if individual things are incorrect, but you get a lot of things right.
But if you are more concerned about not getting things wrong in an exam, you'll work slower and get a higher strike rate of correct answers. But you won't answer as many questions.
These results also raise the question of whether we have enough maths teachers. The answer is no, we don't.
The importance of teachers
Too many people teaching maths in our primary and high schools do not have a degree in mathematics. Studentts see a teacher who is not super-comfortable with what they are teaching - it's not really their thing - and that cannot be a good role model.
If a teacher is tentative about maths, how can they go beyond the textbook, point to the road ahead, convey the excitement beyond, and channel that into their teaching?
What ends up happening is you teach to the textbook in a way that favours ingressive learners who power through everything, don't care what they get wrong and are forward in how they interact in class.
It means the ability to cater for people who think in the other way is diminished.
This is not unique to maths, but the proportion of out-of-field teachers not qualified to teach maths is much higher than other subjects.
We need to think more deeply about what we're testing and why. A lot of the gender gap is probably because we're not testing the right thing.
My instinct is to say performance in those tests does not mean a lot - if a country does well in these tests, it doesn't indicate its population is much better at maths. It just shows they are better at maths tests.
I also don't think we're teaching children the right things. Basic numeracy is important, but computers can solve calculus problems or long division far quicker than humans.
The heart of maths is not these mechanical skills. It's about thinking in as rigorous and clear a way as possible and communicating it to other people.
Richard Garner, pictured, is an Associate Professor in the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences at Macquarie University.