Academics say maths should attract more CAO points [article]

lostexpectation

Academics say maths should attract more CAO points


The Royal Irish Academy says Leaving Cert students sitting their maths exam today should be given bonus points in an effort to revive interest in the subject.

The call comes amid growing concern about the declining number of pupils studying higher-level maths, with less than 20% of students taking the higher-level paper this year.

The RIA believes the difficulty of maths, physics and chemistry is putting people off studying these subjects and thereby leaving them ineligible for many science and engineering courses.

The academy says an A1 in maths, as well as physics and chemistry, should attract an extra 40 points to reflect the increased effort involved in studying such subjects.

why don't they just make it less hard?

brid_m

Exactly!! that'll make more people stick with it!!

delta_bravo

im not sure if this is true but i believe that many years ago maths was HARDER but worth double the points it was worth now. if this is true, i'd say the sec would be reluctant to change again

whassupp2

..because the standard its at is the standard required for college courses. students with standard below this would struggle in engineering, maths courses etc.

simu

lostexpectation wrote:

why don't they just make it less hard?

That would be dumbing down.

Vegeta

whassupp2 wrote:

..because the standard its at is the standard required for college courses. students with standard below this would struggle in engineering, maths courses etc.

This guy is dead right

honors maths is not hard, its just thought poorly in most schools. My teacher was worse than me, our class of 8 people had to constantly correct her

100 points for an A1 in maths is spot on

People are often only told how to differentiate rather than why they are differentiating. I was giving my brother grinds and was amazed to see that his biggest problem was "not reading the question correctly/understanding what the question was asking". He could do all the calculations when i told him what he was being asked in simple terms.

Teachers need to put more emphasis on how to interpret questions i.e. what exactly am i being asked to do, rather than how to divide polynomial equations etc

Raphael

Limerick already do this, an A1 in maths is worth 125 points.

Faerie

I don't think giving Maths extra points is a good idea. If they raise the points, then loads of high-point corses will raise their points even further, so the points for a course like Medicine will go through the roof!
Besides if you start talking about raising the points for Maths because it's so difficult, then it means that people are going to start comparing other subjects and demanding higher/lower points for them. For example people will question if religion deserves to be awarded 100 points for an A1, or if Irish should be awarded more than French.

Dagnir Glaurung

I think it certainly should have extra points, for maths courses. The same should go for other subjects.

Raphael

Faerie: They didn't last time. Back when my mum did her leaving, and this was YEARS ago, you got 5 points for an A, 4 for a B, 3 for a C, or something like that. But in Maths you got 7 for an A, etc. Which meants you could get 32 points if you did Higher maths.

And, as I said, it's already executed in UL. And no ones complaining about it there.

dudara

The honours maths course is already after being dumbed-down enough. It needs to be made harder and taught better. Extra points for one subject is a form of favouritism

Faerie

Raphael wrote:

Faerie: They didn't last time. Back when my mum did her leaving, and this was YEARS ago, you got 5 points for an A, 4 for a B, 3 for a C, or something like that. But in Maths you got 7 for an A, etc. Which meants you could get 32 points if you did Higher maths.

And, as I said, it's already executed in UL. And no ones complaining about it there.

Seems weird getting just 5 points for an A!
But do you not think that it's just rewarding the mathematically-inclined students? I mean it would suit me because Maths and Physics are two of my strongest subjects (well until I ****ed up last Thursday!) but some people have no aptitude for Maths but excel at languages. A friend of mine really wants to be a doctor but he has no chance of getting the points because he's terrible at maths. He gets straight As in languages and Biology, but the maths in Physics and Chemistry drag his grades down. The terrible thing is he would be a brilliant doctor because he has great memory and, more importantly, would have good bedside manner. And maths doesn't really come into being a doctor. If the points were raised for maths I bet the points for medecine would rise even further simply because the amount of people applying for the course would rise as a result of them gaining points from the maths!
And it wouldn't encourage more people to take up the subjects because the reason they aren't taking them up is because they're just too hard for them!
I think it would be terribly unfair!!

Rockerette

thats a stupid idea


i hate maths, not cos i cant do it, i just think its a bit useless most of the time.
why give more points? for me it was just another option of "higher or ordinary maths?! pfft.. im not wasting my time doing higher level maths"

i do 7 other higher level subjects, so "to reflect the increased effort involved in studying such subjects." is a bit... pretentious of those mathematicians - who's to tell me that i dont deserve just as much credit for surviving the honours irish course?! i do physics too, but i wouldnt dare expect any more marks for it than any other subject





it made me laugh though. hehe

Raphael

It's not there to reward people for being good at maths, it's there to reward them for doing well in an exam that is the hardest one in the leaving cert.

Rockerette

Raphael wrote:

it's there to reward them for doing well in an exam that is the hardest one in the leaving cert.

in your opinion.







my sister did sweet fudge all in her maths for lc, did just the bare minimum, came out with an A2 - cos shes naturally good at maths.
she thought it was hte easiest subject, got her best result in it (higher level obviously)

you might find it the hardest, but not everyone does.


so yeah.. i think it does ultimatley reward those who are good at it

Raphael

I'm naturally good at maths, I always have been. I intend to do a degree in college that's next door to pure maths, because I love it. And I find higher maths a difficult subject. Seeing as you don't actually do it, you really can't talk.

Faerie

Raphael wrote:

I'm naturally good at maths, I always have been. I intend to do a degree in college that's next door to pure maths, because I love it. And I find higher maths a difficult subject. Seeing as you don't actually do it, you really can't talk.

Well I do it and I'm naturally good at it, and I think it would be unfair!

Raphael

I never said it would be fair. . THe whole leaving cert isn;t anyway, this one change won;t make it fair.

smemon

i disagree with this drivel.

maths is one subject. there are 6 others. why should we favour maths ahead of english or irish?

all subjects should be equally treated. by increasing the points for maths you're saying "maths is more important than other subjects".

reality is maths isn't used by 99% of people after the leaving. it's boring and frustrating for the average paddy. these guys are trying to up the points value of it because they know it's dying a death - just like irish.

if maths was optional after JC, nobody would take it up. same as irish. :cool:

Raphael

Eh, no, you're an idiot. I need a B2 in Higher level maths for my course, and it's one of my favourite subjects.

DiscoMouse

Maybe it would be more fair to have double paper/core subjects reward extra points. Maths alone shouldn't be given special treatment.

Raphael

Tbh the best thing to do would be to operate a weighted mean system. So if you're applying for a science course, then sciences are worth 150 points max and art and languages are worth 75 or so. It'd be a logistical nightmare though.

Rockerette

Raphael wrote:

Seeing as you don't actually do it, you really can't talk.

oooh. that told me....

honey, im entitled to an opinion just as much as you are, so get the sam hell over yourself




if youre so good at it how do you find it difficult? or how can you say its the hardest subject...?
to me you just contradicted yourself...


either way, its a stupid idea

DiscoMouse

Raphael wrote:

Tbh the best thing to do would be to operate a weighted mean system. So if you're applying for a science course, then sciences are worth 150 points max and art and languages are worth 75 or so. It'd be a logistical nightmare though.

If we had that kind of resources, we could just go for continuous assessment

Raphael

You're as entitled to an opinion about the difficulty of higher maths as I am to an opinion about the difficulty of ordinary maths.

DiscoMouse: Continous assessment would be nice alright.

It'd be interesting to read up on the drop out rate in UL for any and all courses which have a medium to heavy mathematics component in them.

Faerie

DiscoMouse wrote:

If we had that kind of resources, we could just go for continuous assessment

I used to be dead against continuous assessment because I didn't like the idea of having to work all year! But now I think it would be a good idea because my nerves have been getting to me so much this week. I think the leaving cert really is too stressful!!

Rockerette

(edit: to Raphael ) oh good god, seriously


im not saying higher is easy.. never once DID i say that, nor would I EVER, as i dont do it... personally i think ordinary level maths is a piss take its so easy..

but you didnt exactly take my point on board - you said its the hardest subject. i merely pointed out that for some people, eg. my sister, it required hardly any effort to get an A. and for that reason, its not fair that people should just get more points.


she only got an A in maths, and economics.. she found other subjects far more difficult.


thast my point.


so again, just.. get over yourself and your wonderful honours maths ability

Funkstard

smemon wrote:

i disagree with this drivel.

maths is one subject. there are 6 others. why should we favour maths ahead of english or irish?

all subjects should be equally treated. by increasing the points for maths you're saying "maths is more important than other subjects".

reality is maths isn't used by 99% of people after the leaving. it's boring and frustrating for the average paddy. these guys are trying to up the points value of it because they know it's dying a death - just like irish.

if maths was optional after JC, nobody would take it up. same as irish. :cool:

Yeh well done maths is dying, it isn't the driving force behind every recent/major technological innovation at all.

smemon

Raphael wrote:

Eh, no, you're an idiot. I need a B2 in Higher level maths for my course, and it's one of my favourite subjects.

so.... just because you like something doesnt mean every does. the majority of people don't like maths, therefore it would be idiotic to give it higher points as it would create a big divide.

english imo is the most important subject on the LC. it's the language we speak, the only fluent language we speak yet not many can master it.

upping the points in english would not only produce a higher standard of writing, it would also prove beneficial to the economy as spelling, letters, creativity increases.

but is that sensible - no. because people will neglect other subjects then. it gets too complicated if you go weighting subjects.... the system is fine the way it is.

Raphael

Rockerette: To tell you the truth, I'm just being deliberatly argumentative here. It beats studying for biology. =D. Sorry. I couldn;t really care about what changes they make, I'm finished

Raphael

smemon wrote:

so.... just because you like something doesnt mean every does. the majority of people don't like maths, therefore it would be idiotic to give it higher points as it would create a big divide.

english imo is the most important subject on the LC. it's the language we speak, the only fluent language we speak yet not many can master it.

upping the points in english would not only produce a higher standard of writing, it would also prove beneficial to the economy as spelling, letters, creativity increases.

but is that sensible - no. because people will neglect other subjects then. it gets too complicated if you go weighting subjects.... the system is fine the way it is.

Same point. Because you don't like something doesn;t mean that everyone else doesn't. That seems to be the aprt you have trouble with. I made my point in response to your saying "If maths were optional after JC no one would do it"

smemon

Funkstard wrote:

Yeh well done maths is dying, it isn't the driving force behind every recent/major technological innovation at all.

and the percentage of people which use it in life is ?????

not everyone are engineers or developers :rolleyes:

vast majority of people just need to add, subtract, divide, multiply and have a bit of cop on to get through life.

smemon

Raphael wrote:

Same point. Because you don't like something doesn;t mean that everyone else doesn't. That seems to be the aprt you have trouble with. I made my point in response to your saying "If maths were optional after JC no one would do it"

im basing my argument on the opinion of the majority, you're going with minority so i win

thank you for your co-operation.

DiscoMouse

Faerie wrote:

I used to be dead against continuous assessment because I didn't like the idea of having to work all year! But now I think it would be a good idea because my nerves have been getting to me so much this week. I think the leaving cert really is too stressful!!

Yeah, it's undoubtedly a better system. Unfortunately, just like the weighted mean idea, it's a total logistical nightmare. Either a pile of tests to be drawn up, or a bunch of state examiners employed 'round the year to randomly assess various schools. Boo

Raphael

smemon wrote:

im basing my argument on the opinion of the majority, you're going with minority so i win

thank you for your co-operation.

Ah, of course. smemon, the peoples champion, fighting the crusade against all those twats who enjoy learning.

RefulgentGnomon

smemon wrote:

and the percentage of people which use it in life is ?????

not everyone are engineers or developers

vast majority of people just need to add, subtract, divide, multiply and have a bit of cop on to get through life.

Hmm, two mistakes that I can see.
So, English is important, eh?

Naikon

Like it or not, maths is used in most aspects of daily life.

Many of the top jobs such as business consultants, computer consultants, airline pilots, company directors and a host of others require a solid understanding of basic maths, and in some cases require a quite detailed knowledge of maths.

You may think that you would like to program computer games as a job, but don't bother to do well at maths, you'll end up receiving lots of "Unfortunately you have been unsuccessful……" letters. Even though programming of computer games seems to be unrelated to maths, it is full of mathematical techniques such as effects of translation, rotation, symmetry, coordinate geometry, vectors, angles, bearings etc.

"Why do business consultants and directors need to know maths?" you may ask. Business is all about selling a product or service to make money. All transactions within a business have to be recorded in the Company accounts and quite often involve very large sums of money. So for example, you need to be able to estimate the effect of changing numbers in the accounts when trying to work out your expected performance for next year. Also businesses rely heavily on using percentages, in particular anyone who works as a sales person will need to be quick at mental arithmetic, approximation and in working out percentages. The more percentage discount you give a customer when you sell them a product, the less profit your company will make (and quite often the less you will be paid!) so it really does pay to know your maths.

You may think that pilots only need to know how to fly a plane. However, there are lots of other things which pilots need to be concerned with such as the air temperature, air pressure, air speed, altitude (height), rate of descent (speed when coming in to land), glide path (ideal angle to approach for landing) etc. Sometimes pilots will need to do calculations based on readings of certain instruments - familiarity with numbers and manipulating numbers quickly is very important here. Also, pilots will be expected to be able to navigate. This will involve calculating how far they will travel, how much fuel they will use, what bearings should be taken to reach their destination etc. You need to be competent at maths to work on the flight deck, if you are not you may be putting passengers lives at risk!

"Great, but what if I don't want a top job?" you may be asking. Well, look at a couple of examples of other jobs:

If you work as a sales assistant in many stores you now need to have the ability to calculate the cost of goods and change the customers require without using the till. Businesses like to know that you can cope if the machines break down and also they believe that you can give better customer service if you can respond to customers who know their maths. This is the stuff of letters which often appear in local newspapers as "…I bought 2 of the same item at Shop priced at 3 euro, and gave the young sales assistant a 10 euro note and a 1 euro coin expecting to get a 5 euro note as change and do my bit to help prevent the store from running out of change in the till. To my amazement the sales assistant insisted that I had paid too much, I tried to explain to no avail but in the end reluctantly took back my 1 euro coin and was given 4 more 1 euro coins as change…..".

If you work as a self-employed tradesperson e.g plumber, electrician, painter and decorator etc. then you will need to do business accounts and in some cases cater for VAT which needs to be added to the price of each job at the rate of 17.5 % . You will also be able to claim back VAT at the same rate from any materials you need to buy to do the job. You may also get customers who want a percentage discount - in this case you need to be able to work out a realistic percentage so that you don't end up doing the work for nothing! Some trades require you to know more maths than others. For example, An electrician needs to know that Voltage = Current x Resistance - so how does he work out resistance if he knows the Voltage and Current? By using maths - rearrangement of formulae to be precise.

Finally, there are jobs around where you can escape from using any maths at all - refuse collecter, builder's labourer, farm hand etc. However, when you invest your hard earned cash in the bank or building society or get a loan - how do you know that you are not being ripped off. You need to use maths to calculate compound interest rates (to see how much your savings can grow). You also need to use maths to understand the monthly percentages which are added to your credit cards or bank loans or you could end up paying 10,000 in 5 years time for borrowing 2,000 today! If this isn't a good reason to understand maths, I don't know what is.

In essence it is worthwhile to be decent at ordinary maths but i do agree honours maths is pointless unless you need it.
Even most programming only needs basic arithmic unless you are coding games or the like for example.
Leaving cert maths is outdated but it is more useful than learning poetry and Lear.

smemon

RefulgentGnomon wrote:

Hmm, two mistakes that I can see.
So, English is important, eh?

'that' followed by 'Everyone isn't an'

a genius can make mistakes, a genius is also able to correct his own mistakes

smemon

Naikon wrote:

Like it or not, maths is used in most aspects of daily life.

i dont dispute that. i do however dispute that x's and y's and square roots along with fractions to be squared... they are not used in daily life by the vast majority of people.

so i invest my cash in a bank - it doesnt take a genius to work out what the best deal is, you don't need LC maths for that, it's common sense, you just need to be able to multiply and divide.

im good at maths if it's explained properly and i listen to it, however like most people it bores the hell outta me and to date ive had no problems whatsoever with maths outside of school

i'll pass ordinary maths, maybe get a C which will do. reality is - i'll never use it again.

Faerie

Naikon

Most of the jobs you mentioned require the most basic maths taught in 6th class. I mean a farm labourer doesn't need to know Integration or trigonometry!
And you could argue that language is even more important - we need it to communicate! Articulate people, people who can write proper CVs and even people who can speak another language will go further in life!

Anyway this is all irrelevant. Just because maths is useful doesn't mean it merits higher points.

Naikon

Fair enough, I can see your point Smemon.
Even business consultants or the like dont need "differential calculus"
Maths is important but leaving cert maths is a bit of a joke along with most subjects if not all(irish for example isnt taught properly and isnt grasped simply by learning **** off, hence the fact that about 2% of the population speak irish.

Naikon

I understand langauge is very important but my writing skills and grammer and organisational skills and the like were not developed by using English so far in secondary school. Basically English in school apart from technical writing like cv,s ect is pointless. Poetry and the like is also useless.

Rockerette

Raphael wrote:

Rockerette: To tell you the truth, I'm just being deliberatly argumentative here. It beats studying for biology. =D. Sorry. I couldn;t really care about what changes they make, I'm finished

hehe yeah it doesnt really bother me either... i just love argueing... :rolleyes:







i think most of the maths course is a bit useless, and most of us dont use it everyday - no arguments about that


but sure, it doesnt kill us.. and we all know what the mammyies say, what doesnt kill you onyl makes you strong


its 2 years of our lives, i dont think anything on the LC will permanently scar us

Raphael

Grand so, was just getting afraid I was seriously pissing you off.

Rockerette

heh nah no dont worry, its just my bitchy exterior that sometimes gets the better of me

it doesnt really bother me!

Raphael

Well in that case, you're a dumb whore who wouldn;t know a difficult subject if it was doing her from behind with a mace

smemon

Raphael wrote:

Well in that case, you're a dumb whore who wouldn;t know a difficult subject if it was doing her from behind with a mace

i like your style

Rockerette

:cool:


why thank you

caesar

smemon wrote:

upping the points in english would not only produce a higher standard of writing, it would also prove beneficial to the economy as spelling, letters, creativity increases.

Smemon could you explain this to me

Chris_533976

As someone who has done a 4 year Physics degree let me just say that the standard given in Leaving Cert maths is nowhere near high enough for college courses like that. Not nearly enough.