Feedback meeting in Dept of Eduacation today.

turgon

Anyone else up at the meeting in the dept of education today? For those who werent, about sixty people went up to give views on the timetabling to the minister and some SEC officials. Very productive, and the heckling was fun, especcially because of some "classics" (pun intended) by some of the members of the group.

Namely one Aisling Twomey (incidentally I believe the one who did the exam diary for the Cork Independent) came out with the comment of the day. She was talking about honours maths, and after hearing prolonged discussion on the extension of history etc she thought she would stick her nose in for the 3rd time.

She said that insufficient time was given for the examination. She stated that the number of questions should be reduced, and that the content of the course should be halved because the poor girl had to revise from four hardback notebooks. Then, in what was the greatest remark of the day, she announced that the course should be thus reduced because "half of the course was irrelevant, and we would never use it outside of school". How do they make ipods dear?

Thats when I tried to heckle a bit. Another girl sitting near here gave equally useless commentary on classics (;)) and showed an equal desire to hog the mic.

But good overall, and I liked the free €50 book voucher we got, as well as the nice lunch and the all expenses paid. Oh how I love spending tax payers money.

g'way

Did you just randomnly decide to venture up to this meeting or were you chosen?

PurpleFistMixer

Yeah, how did this come about? Never heard of it, and lord knows I love being indignant. (Also lol, did all the questions on the maths paper with time to spare.)

Piste

Heckling is sad and unfunny.

ZorbaTehZ

"Half the course"... clearly she's an idiot.

Cokehead Mother

Surely the minister has more important things to do?

PurpleFistMixer

Is the LC not one of the important things the Minister for Education should be concerned about? Devoting one day (not even, I'd say) getting feedback from students seems worthwhile. (Though 60 students is hardly a fair sample, cramming thousands into a hall probably wouldn't run too smoothly.)

Cokehead Mother

Of course he should be concerned with the Leaving Cert. It's virtually the sole basis on which third level places are offered. The government pays our tutition so it's absolutely vital that the exams are as good as possible indicator of potential for success at a particular course.

Last year Hanafin got to listen to "SIX HOURS OF WORK IN THE SAME DAY? WHAT IS THIS MADNESS?????" and it was decided that English Paper 1 and Paper 2 should be on different days.

I think the minister ought to strive for actual improvement to the education system instead of worrying about whether or not teenagers enjoy the leaving cert.

PurpleFistMixer

True that, but shuffling around the exam timetable is the cheapeast way to make it look like they're enhancing the education system.
(Well, along with "Oh we've increased the marks for the irish oral to 50%, even though what we're now classing as oral was already worth about 40%".)

...To be jaded and bitter about it.

imported_guy

any news about salman85 or cheating discussed in genral?

pvt.joker

imported_guy wrote: »

any news about salman85 or cheating discussed in genral?

lol

nerd3000

any opinions on Accounting raised!?

turgon

Piste wrote: »

Heckling is sad and unfunny.

Being a bigot, like some up there, is more than sad: its soul destroying, and far more than unfunny, in fact anti-humorous and boring.

nerd3000 wrote: »

any opinions on Accounting raised!?

The paper was labeled a disgrace, with way too much emphasis on theory (people said theory should be left to business studies, cas they picked accounting for the bookwork)

Cokehead Mother wrote:

actual improvement to the education system

Like what?

The minister was only there for scarcely 90 minutes, and feedback is the core of a true democratic society

imported_guy

turgon wrote: »

Being a bigot, like some up there, is more than sad: its soul destroying, and far more than unfunny, in fact anti-humorous and boring.



The paper was labeled a disgrace, with way too much emphasis on theory (people said theory should be left to business studies, cas they picked accounting for the bookwork)



Like what?

The minister was only there for scarcely 90 minutes, and feedback is the core of a true democratic society

anything on mr.salman85? like what the evening hareld said and sunday times etc?

Diarmsquid

I got an email about this but I forgot to attend.

As far as I know, I only got the email, because I emailed the Minister in the first place after our Accounting teacher urged us all to contact the Department regarding the new timetable. She wanted us to do the exam in the morning when we're "fresh".

€50 and a free lunch. Damn:mad:

bright

Cokehead Mother wrote: »

Surely the minister has more important things to do?

you see, you would think that....

~Candy~

r they actually gonna do something with the problems that bought up ....i wonder

declan_lgs

was christy tyrell there, and did he come out alive?
im holding u responsible turgon!

i WOULD PAY to see all of the exam-setters have to sit down with leaving cert students, especially after the accounting thread..

raah!

hreh, sooner or later they are going to have to make adjustments to applied maths. As it is now people can get A1s with less than half the course done.......which worked out fine for me, but it's obviously not fair for the other subject doers.

PurpleFistMixer

Less than half the course? You'd have to do well in 6 questions, that means 6 topics out of 10...? If you only do 5 questions you don't have a hope of an A1.

raah!

Fine....... slightly more than half, but it's still not an equal to the amount of work that goes into other subjects. Most apt students only do 6 questions. For my leaving cert I think I shall be using just the usual 1,2,3,4,5,10 for scoring purposes. And that's what most people do (do six that is, not use six for scoring).

PurpleFistMixer

Ah, we did 9 in the class I did. I assumed it was common practice to do them all and leave out hydrostatics.
However, they have in the past tried to catch out students who leave out parts of the course. As in, one year they put a very easy SHM question as part a to some random other question, so if you'd done SHM it was grand, but if you'd left it out you were screwed. That seems fair enough to me. (Though if they'd done that with hydrostatics I wouldn't have been happy.)

IMO, applied maths is harder than honours maths, so it seems fair enough the way it is. Very short course, yes, but the questions can be horrible.

raah!

Yes it's definitly harder, but from my ooint of view, we only put in 2 classes a week, where we had a whole 6 or whatever classes for full subjects.

If you read the chief exameners report even they say that this is a big worry for them, people not doing the whole course.

turgon

Well in fairness, you could fully leave out Discrete Maths, Complex Numbers, Binomial and Induction, and still come out with an A1 in Honours Maths. Its just people dont.

PurpleFistMixer

It could also be a factor that many people do applied maths outside their school as an extra subject, and thus don't have the same time to devote to it as HL maths.

raah!

PurpleFistMixer wrote: »

It could also be a factor that many people do applied maths outside their school as an extra subject, and thus don't have the same time to devote to it as HL maths.

I think this is the main problem, and it's highly likely that they may do something about it. At every half official applied maths gathering (or things of that nature) I was ever at they have expressed concerns about this. People not doing the whole course at weekend classes or whatever.

But then again as turgon said, there is choice in regular maths too...... and apt maths is really hard. There probably won't be any changes any time soon

Rich89

4 hardbook copies for maths? I didnt even have one and i still thought the paper was excellent. Well done to her for taking so many useless notes instead of doing the questions....you dont learn off how to do certain maths questions like you can in accounting! Look where that got some accounting students this year...