I gained an appreciation of the challenges faced by students and teachers of maths when, as Vice President of Engineers Ireland a few years ago, I chaired a Report on the Learning and Teaching of Maths and Science at Second Level Report. This Report led to a lot of welcome changes in the new approach adopted by recent Ministers of Education.
Everyone uses maths even when buying food in the supermarket. At higher level, complex maths systems lie behind modern day inventions like the iPhone, chemical processes, water treatment, flying aeroplanes, PC’s, electricity networks and Google on the Internet. Most of us don't know or care what maths lie behind these modern gadgets or systems and don't need to know as long as they work! When the lights don't switch on, then we tend to blame the engineers but when the lights do switch on (as in 99.9% of the time!) we rarely appreciate their value.
Project Maths is designed to help us gain a deeper understanding of what we are learning - to get us away from the 'rote learning' school systems of the past. Generations of students and teachers have been brought up to apply a diet of formulae and theorems 'learnt by heart' without needing to understand what they were doing. We are not going to change this overnight.
The early signs from Project Maths are very positive. Helped by extra bonus points for Grade D or better on the Honours Leaving Cert, the numbers sitting the Honours Maths paper this year are up more than 50%. That's good news. Also, the fear of taking the Honours Maths paper and not getting at least a Grade D and thus completely failing the Leaving Cert is now gone. That's more good news!
If suddenly the Leaving Cert grades were to dramatically improve overnight with Project Maths then we would say that the marking systems were now easier than before to make the new approach look good. The media would cry wolf again!
Of course, we can train our kindergarden and Primary school children to 'understand and think maths' from first principles. But this would take over 20 years before this year’s Junior Infants go into the workforce.
Even then I worry more about the teachers than the students. It was discovered lately that approx 60% of maths teachers in Second Level Schools had no degree in maths. They were unqualified to teach maths or were 'out of field' as a learned University of Limerick research report euphemistically put it. That issue once known is also now being addressed with extra teacher training which will also take years to embed. For instance many of the better teachers of the old system have no PC or lack any IT skills to take the new on-line learning on board. Many simply did not see the new unfamiliar Project Maths approach coming down the track.
Maths is a sensitive and critically important subject to get right as it will greatly impact on our future economic development as a nation. Decades of national systemic failure in the learning and teaching of maths will not be solved overnight but we have made a good start. Our failures in this respect were firmly understood by the previous Government who introduced the extra bonus points to improve student uptake at Honours LC level. This has certainly worked but as Minister Ruairi Quinn stated this week it’s only a temporary measure until we embed the Project Maths approach. The Minister is correct in defending the new syllabus as a work in progress that needs ongoing support by industry particularly in the engineering profession. I'm glad to see in yesterday's Times that he acknowledges Engineers Ireland to be one of the industry leaders on this issue.
I am delighted to report that Engineers Ireland are still giving the free Leaving Cert Maths Grinds on Saturdays during the school year and have extended the service beyond Dublin to the other major cities.
