Madam, - What a pity that the slightly greater success of girls than boys in Higher Level maths in the recent Leaving Certificate results appears to be regarded as a problem by some people involved in education. It is not so long since Higher maths was unavailable in many girls' schools.
The number of those doing well in this subject and in physics and chemistry could be squared and cubed, no matter what their gender, and we still would not have enough people qualified in these subjects in this country to meet our own needs.
It will not help the morale of teenage boys to be told they need some sort of different assessment to do well in exams (The Irish Times, August 20th). Many do extremely well at present; three of the four students who achieved 8 A1s, according to The Irish Times, were boys. Three of the four were from Cork. So Should Cork students have a different method of assessment, too?
Like Prof Ciaran Bolger (August 25th), I wonder how the aptitude tests for medicine will work. Never have I heard that very intelligent people are less compassionate than others - and the skills needed for the various branches of medicine are quite different, as he points out.
There have been no complaints, as far as I am aware, that the young doctors produced here nowadays are more unfeeling than their counterparts of 30 years ago. Is the main problem that the majority are women? Apparently this will lower the "status" of medicine but I have not heard it said that the doctors are any less able.
About 20 years ago Gemma Hussey, then Minister for Education, got rid of the code for Leaving Certificate students whereby the examiner knew the gender of the student he or she was marking. I do hope the code used for the medical aptitude tests will not allow any possible bias to be re-introduced. - Yours, etc.,
Senator MARY HENRY, MD, Seanad Éireann, Dublin 2.