Dramatic fall in number failing maths

I think that we'll have to wait and see whether the news today represented an actual improvement in the mathematical abilities in this country or if the insertion of the supposedly easier Project Maths has had an immediate impact.

George Humphries, who has written text books on the new course, was on News Talk on Monday. He felt that the direction of the new syllabus, with it's emphasis on Euclidian geometry, Statistics and Probability (as well as its obsession with worded problems) at the expense of vectors, matrices and certain areas of calculus is essentially dumbing down the subject.

If we hear of a higher than average drop out rate from Science and Engineering courses next few years then we'll have some indicator if his worst fears are coming to pass. (I think only half the course was PM this year so we won't know the full effect of it until at least 18 months time)

Brussels Sprout wrote: »

If we hear of a higher than average drop out rate from Science and Engineering courses next few years then we'll have some indicator if his worst fears are coming to pass.

Even back in 1998 when I started my degree, NUIG had to include Maths as a first year subject in Commerce due to the poor standard of maths amongst those entering the course. It was nothing more than a repeat of chunks of the Higher Level Leaving Certificate syllabus.

I'm open to correction but I'd be very, very surprised if a similar module isn't still in place in Commerce, never mind Scientific or Engineering courses.

Hi all,
I believe that project maths is a good first step in the right direction, but it does not by itself constitute a remedy for the serious problem that is second level maths in Ireland. There should be a new, more challenging syllabus brought in in the future.

As far as I can see we have 3 main problems at the moment:

• Bad attitude towards learning maths - The biggest problem we have, there are two parts to it. Firstly, there is the idea students have that maths is too difficult to even try to understand and they would be better off spending their time learning off algorithms. Secondly, students often feel there is no use to learning maths if they don't want to become engineers or scientists. On the contrary, maths is the best way to give structure to your mind, which is important no matter what they do later.
• The level isn't high enough - The level of second level maths was low enough before the change compared to other countries' like France or Germany. Although it covered almost as many concepts it lagged far behind in terms of the ingenuity required of students. Now students have to be more creative but the syllabus is more restricted.
• Bad teaching - Personally I haven't had much experience with this but I suspect that when it does occur it is due to a cycle of uninterested students (ie. fix the other two problems and you fix this one).

Project Maths sets out to fix the first of these problems, and I'm sure it will - in it's own way. So far, though, it has only aggravated the second which I will now focus on.

Let's take France as an example. French kids study maths in more depth in the same time as Irish kids, yet more ingenuity is required to get the same grade. Why? Well aside from greater motivation, French kids haven't all grown up with the idea that an A is the norm. In most French classes (30 students) only one or two students would consistently get over 80%. This allows third level establishments to differentiate between the good and the very good. In terms of higher/ordinary, students decide in 5th year if they want to put a greater emphasis on scientific or literary subjects, with a different syllabus according to their choice. Science/Literary subjects then also count more or less in their final "points".

We cannot immediately expand the syllabus as students will need at first to get used to thinking creatively with the present PM syllabus. But in a few years it will be time to increase the depth of the course. Won't kids get worse results then, leading to lower CAO points? Yes, at first, but only slightly. And is that such a bad thing? Maintaining the 25 bonus points for Higher level should be enough to keep students interested.

To sum up : I propose that the syllabus be expanded and exam questions go into more depth in some kind of "Project Maths 2", and that this should begin as soon as possible after 2014.

Whether you agree or disagree I would love some opinions on this.
ClovisI

Kinski wrote: »

Colour me cynical, but the first year of Project Maths, and there's a "dramatic fall" in the failure rate? I guess they can call it a "resounding success."

The number of A grades in ordinary level maths has fallen dramatically. It could be the case that many of those who previously did ordinary level were capable of sitting the higher level paper but didn't bother because of the perceived amount of work.

edit: what I mean is that it could be mostly down to bonus points.

Brussels Sprout wrote: »

If we hear of a higher than average drop out rate from Science and Engineering courses next few years then we'll have some indicator if his worst fears are coming to pass. (I think only half the course was PM this year so we won't know the full effect of it until at least 18 months time)

Not really. The makeup of these types of courses is changing significantly anyway because of the recession and the relative resilience of the IT sector. If college grades fall it'll be hard to tell what's causing it.

ClovisI wrote: »

Well aside from greater motivation, French kids haven't all grown up with the idea that an A is the norm. In most French classes (30 students) only one or two students would consistently get over 80%. This allows third level establishments to differentiate between the good and the very good.

Less than 1% of all students achieved an A1 in honours level maths.

sock puppet wrote: »

Less than 1% of all students achieved an A1 in honours level maths.

source?

sock puppet wrote: »

http://www.examinations.ie/index.php?l=en&mc=st&sc=r12

This year's results are there.

Fascinating stuff. I must admit that I thought you had pulled that figure out of your ass. I'm shocked. So even though more people are doing maths the numbers getting A1s has actually been falling dramatically from 629 in 2010 to 486 last year and this year only 345 managed it.

I did an engineering degree in college and went back later on to do a masters in applied maths so through those courses I've met a lot of people who were really good at the subject. It must have completely skewed my impression of the mathematical abilities of the general population though as I would have thought the numbers would have been way higher than that.

I've already talked abou the drop in the numbers of A1s above. Now if you go further down the grades the numbers do increase (A2s rose from 618 to 712, B1s from 824 to 1169, B2s from 947 to 1414 and B3s from 1021 to 1592).
So if we look at just those grades we see an excess from 2011 to 2012 of 1336. 2896 extra students sat the paper this year, so that means the remainder, or 1,560 got a C1 or less.

So what does this all mean? Well I would guess that what is happening is that obviously the 25 bonus points is a game changer. Kids who, in the past would have dropped down to pass and diverted their energies into their other subjects have felt the need to stick up at honours and slog out an average grade. I'd imagine the maths grinds business was booming last year at the lower end of the market (The "please get me a pass" brigade).

I hear that they're going reviewing the 25 points already. I mean if you think about it it's a bit farcical that students who are competing for things like Law, Medicine and Dentistry which all require ordinary level maths, if at all basically must do honours maths since the competition is so fierce to get in. Totally unfair in my opinion. The 3rd level institutes or some body should go through the college courses and specify the ones that actually require mathematical ability e.g. Engineering, Science, Economics, Computer Science.

I'd be interested to hear people's opinions on why the numbers of A1s have dropped by 45% in the past 2 years. That's shocking. The only possible reasons I can think of are

(a) This year's exam had some really difficult parts that were unavoidable

or

(b) The excess numbers of students sitting honours diverted teachers attention and dragged down the grades of the top students

djpbarry wrote: »

Why? I think you're getting a little hung up on specific grades. Besides, the number of students earning an A1 should be relatively low.

Let's compare it to the change in A1s in other subjects:

English: 3.9% (2010), 4.3% (2011), 4.1% (2012
Irish: 4.8%, 5.7%, 7.3%
Geography: 3.1%, 3.0%, 3.4%
History: 6.4%, 5.8%, 6.3%
Maths: 7.5%, 5.9%, 4.2% (I adjusted this last figure up from it's actual value of 3.1% to allow for the large number of extra pupils sitting it this year who are most likely swelling the lower grades)

So in all of the other subjects we have the numbers getting A1s remaining stable (or rising considerably in the case of Irish) but in Maths we have a large drop.

I'm curious as to why that is and is it an indicator that the schools are not catering toward students who have a very high aptitude for maths.

astrofool wrote: »

I don't think it's a bad thing that the maths ability of our college students/graduates should be higher on average after this change. The maths on the HL course is not exactly mind boggling, and it's probably right that more technical students are getting onto these courses, than non technical students.

Would it not make more sense to award bonus points for Chemistry and Biology for Medicine and Dentistry? Chemistry especially is a technical subject and will be a lot more useful to these students over the course of their studies.

The examiners were told to go "soft" on marking them.
Basically Politics is now interfering with our education system.
It would look bad if the governments new pet project didn't do well eh?