Funny maths?

AS a maths teacher, it is heartening to read that failure rates have almost halved among ordinary level students who sat a Project Maths paper.

However, if this is because the papers were noticeably easier, and the marking less rigorous, it represents a step backwards to lower standards all round.

Not enough students are taking higher level maths largely because too many schools lack reasonably good maths teachers, so let’s ‘fix’ the problem by changing the goalposts, making them so wide it will be almost impossible not to score.