Is higher level maths offered in all schools?

dafunk

Does anyone know if every school in the country is obliged to offer higher level maths or is it possible that you could be in a school which only teacher ordinary level?

unknown13

Why wouldn't it be offered. It is a higher level Core / Mandatory subject.

Chuchoter

Possibly if you were in a really bad school and there wasn't enough people to merit having a higher class. Happened in the school my mum teaches in, only a pass french class at LC, no honours one

MathsManiac

According to page 18 of this report:
http://www.iua.ie/media-and-events/press-releases/releases/2007/documents/ReportoftheProjectMathsImplementationSupportGroup9June2010.pdf,
there were 79 schools that had no higher level maths candidates in the exams of 2009. However, of these, most had people entered as Higher Level students at the start of the year. According to the footnote, 35 of them had no higher level students at the start of sixth year. This might or might not mean that they didn't offer it - they could be schools with very few LC students, where nobody wanted to do Higher Level maths.

spurious

It's difficult have both levels in the one class, so schools where there is only one LC class probably wouldn't have an official HL class, though arrangements may be made at an extra cost to the school to cater for them. In times of cutbacks of course such measures will disappear even more.

Big Pussy Bonpensiero

Yeah i know some one who was the only higher maths student in the year, got her own private teacher which, obviously enough, worked out very well for her.

dafunk

Thanks for the replys people, I possibly phrased the question badly, my point really was 'is every school obliged by law to provide higher level Maths?'. If there's only one student out of 60 doing higher level does the school have to provide a teacher and class for that student or can they say to the student that they won't offer it?

pathway33

dafunk wrote: »

my point really was 'is every school obliged by law to provide higher level Maths?'.

Google 'irish constitution' and see article 42 on education

'the primary and natural educator of the child is the Family'

'the State shall provide for free primary education and shall endeavour to supplement and give reasonable aid ....'

i.e you don't have to send your kid to school if you as a parent can provide a minimum level of education at home. If you do want to send your kid to school the State is legally obliged to provide free primary education and secondary education to the extent that it satisifes the State's legal requirement to be guardian of the common good. As I read it the State is not required to provide an honours maths teacher where it does not contribute to the common good.....but I could be wrong

Now if it was a private school and a contract was entered by the parents and the school whereby there was a reasonable expectation that honours maths would be provided then the parents/student may have a case....but I ain't no solicitor

You could also have a look at the Education Act 1998 http://www.oireachtas.ie/documents/bills28/acts/1998/a5198.pdf which according to section 9 requests that a school "provide education to students which is appropriate to their abilities".

So if you have an ability to do higher maths then according to the Education Act 1998 it seems the school should provide higher maths even for 1 student.....but then it goes on to mention "available resources" so if the financial resources are not there then maybe that's a get out of jail card for the school/dept of education

mmmm too confusing...maybe the question should be asked in the legal forum

rainbowtrout

dafunk wrote: »

Does anyone know if every school in the country is obliged to offer higher level maths or is it possible that you could be in a school which only teacher ordinary level?

No I know of a number of schools that don't offer HL maths for LC simply because they don't have enough interested in doing it to justify a class.

crayolastereo wrote: »

Possibly if you were in a really bad school and there wasn't enough people to merit having a higher class. Happened in the school my mum teaches in, only a pass french class at LC, no honours one

you have a strange attitude to the education system crayolastereo. Because a school does not offer HL maths does not mean they are a bad school. A school not 15 miles away from me does not offer HL maths. It is not a bad school. It does however only have about 120 pupils across 6 years. That's an average of 20 students per year. One class. A school that small generally only has a skeleton staff that provides the core subjects of the curriculum and a restricted number of choice subjects at JC and LC. So if they have 19 students who want to do OL and 1 student who wants to do HL, well it's tough luck to that student. In my experience of students who have gone to the school they have three options: stay there and do OL, change school so they can do HL(which a few of them do) or do HL maths outside school.

It's the same for other subjects. A teacher friend of mine used to work in a rural secondary school with 75 students. Approximately 15 students in each year. In 5th/6th year they had no option for HL maths. Everyone had to do French (to meet college requirements). And for their final three subjects they had a choice something like this: Construction or Home Ec/ Ag Science or Biology/ Business or Geography. Not a great choice you may say but you will notice that many of those subjects are considered to be points subjects, they covered all the bases in that they could take a science/business/arts subject and meet college requirements. The principal gave them the best chance he could at getting to college with limited resources and each year 9 or 10 of those students go to university. Not a bad record with such limited choice.

dafunk wrote: »

Thanks for the replys people, I possibly phrased the question badly, my point really was 'is every school obliged by law to provide higher level Maths?'. If there's only one student out of 60 doing higher level does the school have to provide a teacher and class for that student or can they say to the student that they won't offer it?

The only subjects a school is required to provide is Irish and Religion. Schools provide the core subjects realistically because that is what colleges/employers are looking for and you won't get too far if you can read and write/do basic maths at the very least. Schools are to provide subjects and levels as far as they can with the resources they have. However sometimes they have to draw a line and it's not feasible to put on a class with 1 student in it. If that was the case lots of students would be attending schools with their own personalised timetables. I'm sure you know plenty of people who didn't get all the subjects they wanted in 5th year because of the choices they were offered. The school has to accommodate the majority and can't put an extra class in a block just to suit one student. Or many students in this situation as is often the case. Offering levels within subjects is much the same.

There have been years in the past where we have been able to offer chemistry in my school because only 2 students out of say 80 opted for it. A class that small can't be justified. That's unfortunate if it is a course requirement and they have to go elsewhere if they are looking for Pharmacy or Medicine. This year we have no physics class in our fifth year for much the same reasons.

rainbow kirby

My cousin's school (in Dublin) doesn't offer HL - he's the only person in his year who wanted to do it, and his teacher has been absolutely horrible to him about it.

randylonghorn

rainbow kirby wrote: »

... and his teacher has been absolutely horrible to him about it.

Why?

rainbow kirby

randylonghorn wrote: »

Why?

I have no idea. My cousin's a really nice, hard-working kid (hoping to study science, so HL maths is useful to him both for points and his future career) - he's just in a bad school.

randylonghorn

Well, I can understand why schools can't always offer it, for the reasons the other Rainbow (jeez, twins! :P) explained.

Sounds strange that his teacher would resent him for wanting to do it though.

spurious

There are bad teachers and more often bad students but rarely is there a bad school - it doesn't make sense.

Your cousin could get HL classes outside school if he/she wanted.

Otherwise, talk to our friends in FF/PD about cutting resources - don't blame the school.

lctake2

i know people that went to schools with no higher maths class, i presume that if there are schools with minimal numbers of students that are interested then after a couple of years of no higher maths class there would no longer be a teacher there to teach higher maths? it's going to be really unfair on people though when the bonus points for maths come in

implausible

lctake2 wrote: »

i know people that went to schools with no higher maths class, i presume that if there are schools with minimal numbers of students that are interested then after a couple of years of no higher maths class there would no longer be a teacher there to teach higher maths?

That's ridiculous. Teachers are qualified in their subjects, not Higher or Ordinary. A permanent teacher wouldn't just 'disappear' overnight because there isn't uptake for HL in his/her subject:rolleyes:

It's simply a case of not enough resources. The Dept cutbacks have resulted in schools not having enough teachers for example, to provide for a small group to do HL Maths. Instead, they are bundled into a mixed group. But even before the cuts, a class of 4/5 students was often not a runner. Every school has to decide on a fair distribution of staff to give a good education to the majority of students.

lctake2

i know that teachers are qualified to teach both but for example in my old school there were 2 teachers that always taught honours and 2/3 that always taught pass. having not taught honours for years the school wouldnt give the 'pass' teachers an honours class. all the teachers have 2 subjects they can teach so i'm assuming a maths teacher could be reassigned like my german teacher had taught music the year before but was needed to teach german so effectively a music teacher had 'disappeared'. or my local school the german teacher left years ago and since then you can't do german there. it's stupid but it happens

implausible

lctake2 wrote: »

having not taught honours for years the school wouldnt give the 'pass' teachers an honours class.

all the teachers have 2 subjects they can teach so i'm assuming a maths teacher could be reassigned like my german teacher had taught music the year before but was needed to teach german so effectively a music teacher had 'disappeared'. or my local school the german teacher left years ago and since then you can't do german there. it's stupid but it happens

You can either teach a subject or you can't. Why would a school decide not to have an Hons class if the demand was there? There was either an issue with demand or qualifications.

Not every teacher has two subjects but you're right, if the demand for a subject isn't there, the subject won't be offered and the teacher will teach something else. The teacher (if s/he is permanent) will still be in the school though, probably waiting for the opportunity to teach the level or subject again.

rainbowtrout

lctake2 wrote: »

i know that teachers are qualified to teach both but for example in my old school there were 2 teachers that always taught honours and 2/3 that always taught pass. having not taught honours for years the school wouldnt give the 'pass' teachers an honours class. all the teachers have 2 subjects they can teach so i'm assuming a maths teacher could be reassigned like my german teacher had taught music the year before but was needed to teach german so effectively a music teacher had 'disappeared'. or my local school the german teacher left years ago and since then you can't do german there. it's stupid but it happens

yes, in that scenario it can happen. The school I work in used to offer French, German and Spanish. There wasn't much demand for Spanish and the teacher was close to retirement so when he retired he wasn't replaced and we don't offer it anymore. But it shouldn't be the case for maths, it's a core subject. It's not a case that maths disappears from the school, only that it's not feasible to run a HL and an OL class. In my school 2 years ago there were four maths classes in fifth year, one HL and 3 OL classes. One OL class was the best OL students and the other two were weaker groups where there were only 12-13 in each class. Since the cutbacks the two weaker classes were combined so those students lose out because they teacher can't spend as much time with each student, and they are the students that need it most. HL is small but big enough to justify a class of it's own, and the course is too different to be able to lump it in with an OL class.