Leaving Cert results - Things aren’t adding up with maths

TODAY’S Leaving Certificate results have once again sounded alarm bells, alarm bells that have rung loudly every August for some years now.

They confirmed that far, far too many of our young people leave secondary school without an adequate understanding of mathematics.

This year just over 35,000 students sat ordinary level maths and 4,403 of those failed even this basic test. This failure rate — 12.3% — continues a dismal trend; more and more students are failing rudimentary maths.