There's another warning from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) about Australia's declining proficiency in maths.
Last week they published a new cut of the results of the 2012 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which focused on the lowest performers and Australia's report card is not good. 
The OECD said that 20 per cent of Australian 15-year-olds are low maths performers, 14 per cent are low performers in reading and 14 per cent are low performers in science.
And our maths performance is worrying, not just because its worse than reading and science, but also because it's declined since 2003 when 15 per cent of our 15-year-olds were low maths performers.
The low performers are defined as being below PISA's level two, which "is considered the baseline of proficiency that is required to participate fully in modern society".
The PISA tests are not highly academic. They test skills that people use in their everyday life and work and this means that those who perform poorly against the PISA benchmark are likely to have problems in navigating ordinary challenges we all face.
Clearly many of us don't have a high standard of mathematical literacy. This was even evident in The Australian's story on the OECD report, which asserted that one half of teens were failing maths, reading or science. They reached this conclusion by adding up the percentages who were failing in the three areas (it totals 48 per cent) forgetting that they are double, and even triple, counting the kids who are failing in more than one area.
How panicked should we be?
There is some solace in the fact that Australia's PISA results in all three areas are still above the OECD average. But there would be a very tangible gain for the country if skills improved. According to other OECD research if all Australian kids attained at least the level two baseline performance level by 2030, then Australia's GDP by 2095 (when kids born today will have complete their life's contribution) would be 11 per cent higher than otherwise.
That's something worth shooting for. And we actually know what to do to help get there. A major current problem is the current shortage of high school maths teachers, with 40 per cent of year 7-10 classes being taught by unqualified people.
This is caused by a lack of talented students choosing to study maths at university. And many universities have helped cause the problem by deciding that traditional year 12 maths subjects are longer pre-requisites for maths-related courses, which means that maths study at year 12 is declining.
Recently the University of Sydney decided to reinstitute year 12 maths as a pre-requisite.
Other universities should follow.