The Leaving Certificate is many things: a rite of passage, a selection mechanism for third level education, and a qualification in its own right. It is also increasingly used by industry as a barometer of our educational health.
One should never read too much into a single set of figures but this year’s results give policy makers pause for thought. There has been a major drive to get more students to take higher level Mathematics in recent years, and the main instrument used has been a blunt one: offering bonus points to candidates applying for third level education.
However, there is a limit to students’ ability and the growing failure rate at higher level, coupled with a levelling off in the exam uptake, indicates that further progress in raising standards can’t be achieved without also investing in Mathematics teaching and learning.
Project Maths, a curriculum designed to make the subject more relevant to students’ everyday lives, has been rolled out over the past five years, and opinion is still divided on its merits.
The most vocal concerns come from third level, with a study from University of Limerick earlier this year reporting that students entering higher education were at increased risk of failing courses with a maths module. While not definitive, it said Project Maths “has coincided with a decline in performance of the basic mathematical skills which are required for students to be fully prepared for service mathematics studied in higher education.”
To counteract any loss of advanced, theoretical content in the new curriculum, many science teachers would like to see greater focus on Applied Mathematics in schools but at present there are only 409 qualified teachers of the subject compared, for example, to 6,628 qualified history teachers.
Moreover, the Applied Maths syllabus is currently under review with a plan in train to introduce computer science as a module within the course – against the advice of many maths teachers.
Another proposal that’s universally welcomed is the plan to create four “pathways” through Maths: foundation level, ordinary level, higher level and what would be called “Extended Higher Mathematics”. However, before any fresh initiative is introduced the Department should listen carefully to practitioners at both second and third level.
Another trend of note this year is the continuing decline in students opting for the Leaving Cert Applied and Vocational programmes. The lack of support for these resource-intensive options undermines the Department’s efforts to boost further education, apprenticeships and training so that school-leavers have an attractive alternative to the third-level path.