Sir, – I write as a former maths, physics, applied maths and science teacher.
All Leaving Cert maths papers should be allocated three hours and the number of questions to be answered should be standardised to six. That would allow a half-hour per question. In this year’s paper students were expected to answer eight questions in 2½ hours, which allows less than 20 minutes per question. I have never understood this obsession with making maths papers, in particular, a “race against the clock”. It is totally unreasonable and a major stress factor. The nature of maths, as opposed to most other subjects at Leaving Cert, allows for much creativity in the construction of questions – the corollary is that students need time to think out their approach. It may surprise some people to know that most maths questions can be tackled in a variety of ways; at Leaving Cert the approach is as important as the solution. On the other hand, while less than three hours seems to be suitable for some subjects, no Leaving Cert exam should be longer than three hours – three hours of concentrated work at any subject is surely long enough to show your level of subject mastery. It goes without saying, but needs to be said, that more time should not mean longer questions. A final practical point on the issue of time allocation – it should not be beyond the ingenuity of timetable designers to avoid scheduling two three-hour sessions on the same day. Why is it not obvious that a student is going to be exhausted after such sessions and will not be able to perform at their best the following day?
A second important consideration, essentially based on fairness, demands that all Leaving Cert papers should have choice built in as a matter of principle. When the Project Maths scheme was introduced a number of years ago, someone decided that all questions were mandatory – this seems extraordinary when there is lots of choice in every other subject. That position changed marginally when Covid intervened; choice was introduced but it was a miserly concession. Post-Covid, that minor element of choice has been retained. This year students were asked to answer five questions in Section A from a total of six and three questions from Section B from a total of four. Compare the situation with physics. Students were asked to do three questions from a total of four in Section A and five questions from a total of nine in Section B. It should be borne in mind that Section A in physics covers a set of mandatory laboratory experiments where students are expected to be fully conversant with the material; there is no surprise factor. That is never the case in maths – each question is a new challenge even if you are very well versed in a topic. This lack of choice is another unnecessary stress factor for students – choice allows students to build on their strong suit. There should also be full clarity on what topics will be covered in each paper, as is the norm in all other two-paper subjects. This is essential to allow students to plan their study and eliminates another major stress factor. I also think the bonus points for maths is educationally unsound as is any continuous assessment model as it makes little allowance for consolidation and interlinkage between different topics in a subject such as maths.
The current higher Leaving maths syllabus is seriously deficient in terms of preparing students for third-level courses in science, maths and engineering. To cite just few of those deficiencies – the exclusion of matrices and vectors and the lack of depth in the treatment of integration (no reference to integration by parts or integration by substitution).
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The structure of individual questions in terms of both the amount of reading required to understand what the question is about and in terms of how a topic is presented in a question is problematic: the previous syllabus had an established three-part pattern to each question – a relatively easy introduction, a challenging second part, and a really challenging third part – but we seem to have reverted to the “all or nothing” approach which was the norm when I began teaching over 50 years ago!
I believe the introduction of the changes I am suggesting would help greatly to reduce stress and allow students to perform to their best because the Leaving Cert is here to stay for the foreseeable future. – Yours, etc,
CON HAYES, MA, BSc
Blarney,
Co Cork