Education minister says Maths failure rates ‘within the norms’

The Minister for Education Jan O'Sullivan has said she will keep the maths results in the Leaving Cert under review.

The proportion of students failing high level maths has risen for the third year in a row.

Almost one third of candidates sat the higher level paper this year and the failure rate has risen to 5.2% up from 4.2% last year.

However, Minister O'Sullivan insists the failure rate is “within the norms”.

“It’s (the maths failure rate) pretty much within the norms, but we will keep it under review,” said the Minister for Education.

“It is relevantly recently that the changes were made and I think that it is important that we make sure that it is working properly. The evidence suggests that we now have students taking the paper and students doing pretty well.”