Project Maths wins students’ seal of approval

A TRIAL maths syllabus has been given the thumbs up by Leaving Certificate students.

Around 1,800 students at 24 schools spent the last two years learning part of the maths course through new teaching methods under the Project Maths programme, which will be used in all schools from September.

At St Patrick’s College, Gardiner’s Hill on Cork city’s northside, five of the 22 girls taking Leaving Certificate maths chose higher level maths – a far higher proportion than the one-in-six national average – and were pleased with Paper 2. It was the first examination of students taught the new statistics and geometry sections of the syllabus, with next year’s Junior Certificate students at the pilot schools taking the first exam for younger pupils in a year’s time.

While most of the girls taking higher level at St Patrick’s College said they were always likely to choose the tougher exam but they believe more young people might stick with honours maths under the new programme.

“The course is more practical, you have to think about the reason for doing stuff instead of just knowing what to formula to use. You have to understand it, and it’s more than just learning off equations,” said Niamh O’Higgins.

Maths teacher Helen Lambe said the higher and ordinary level papers were both very fair, with interesting real-life situations in the second section. It included a picture of a wooden roof framework to illustrate a trigonometry question and a statistics question based on research around heart rates during exercise.

“Questions like that bring maths to life, the students realise that statistics are everywhere around them, in newspapers and on television so they can now apply their maths knowledge to understand them better,” Ms Lambe said.

The aim of Project Maths is to increase numbers taking higher level maths in the Leaving Certificate to around 30%, improving students’ ability to master the subject for science and engineering courses at college.

St Patrick’s student Linda Crowley said yesterday’s paper was fair, but she is not convinced that Project Maths has made the final exam any less difficult.

“I definitely disagree that it’s easier than the old Paper 2,” said Linda who hopes to take maths as one of her subjects on a university arts degree.

Jennifer Hornibrook said the syllabus was much more understandable under Project Maths and believes it could get younger students more interested.

Sarah Long said the exam was fine and, although some questions were tough, others had suited her nicely with some questions requiring more English in the answers than figures and calculations.