Teaching maths - It just does not add up

Monday, October 26, 2009

EVERY year, when Leaving Certificate results are published, we have fret about why the great majority of our children seem so daunted by higher level maths.

We recognise that if we are to have any chance of actually becoming a knowledge-based economy this cannot go on. We recognise that this failure rate cannot but be a disincentive to many industrialists considering investing in this country.

Education Minister Batt O’Keeffe has just released figures that show that more than a third of maths teachers in secondary schools are not graduates in the subject.

How can this be? Surely there is a connection between this and the declining success rates at Leaving Cert level? Why do teachers not protest about this as loudly as they protest about pupil-teacher ratios?

Why do we put up with it?

This story appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Monday, October 26, 2009