Admit students who fail honours maths, says Coughlan

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seamus

donegalfella wrote: »

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Absolutely. If someone is incapable of passing honours maths, they probably won't rank very highly in OL maths either - a C at best. It also creates a loophole whereby a student who knows they won't pass ordinary level maths can just go ahead and do a higher level paper to avoid matriculation requirements.

Between this and grade inflation, Coughlan is seeking to make our degree worthless by printing more of them.

Colonel Sanders

Knowledge economy eh?

t4k30

seamus wrote: »

Absolutely. If someone is incapable of passing honours maths, they probably won't rank very highly in OL maths either - a C at best. It also creates a loophole whereby a student who knows they won't pass ordinary level maths can just go ahead and do a higher level paper to avoid matriculation requirements.

Between this and grade inflation, Coughlan is seeking to make our degree worthless by printing more of them.

Thats a very broad and sweeping sweeping statement to make. There is no way you can compare ordinary and higher level maths. Many students who drop from Higher to ordinary average out on B's and A's. In saying that they should definetly shouldnt allow people who fail into degree's. Its the way it has always been, either you make the cut or you dont. If you dont make the cut go home and try again ! There is always next year !

P. Breathnach

There are third-level courses where mathematical ability is largely irrelevant, such as language studies. There are other courses where there is a requirement for arithmetic rather than mathematical skills, such as nursing and catering.

But let's not debate the question.

RonMexico

Grading Coughlan so far on her performance in Government I'd award her an F. She is the class dunce. Of course as an abject failure she is made Tanaiste and handed a nice department portfolio. I can see now why she thinks other failures should be awarded.

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the_syco

TBH, he sounds like one of those f**ktards who thinks a fail in honours is better than a pass in ordinary...

A fail is a fail, muthaf**ker.

Sulmac

Maybe if we had more qualified maths teachers this wouldn't be an issue.

Half maths teachers 'not qualified'
GENEVIEVE CARBERY

Almost half of post-primary maths teachers are not qualified in that field, new research has shown.

IrishTimes.com

toiletduck

Unbelievable. Is this the best the Government can come up with to address this issue?

dan_d

Oh lord. She's totally missing the point of the entire problem here. And people usually drop to OL because they find HL too difficult, or they don't want to spend the time on it.

When can we get rid of her?

walshb

I dropped from Higher to Ordinary at the last minute and got an A2, so I don't think
the comparison between the two is accurate, as in, an E in higher equals a D or C at
lower, you cannot really compare.

cuculainn

We need to get this gimp out of the government (or just get the whole government out) before she runs the country into the ground. She is an absolute disgrace to the country and to the title of Minister.....She ran the depart of enterprise into the ground and now she is going to run the dept of education into the ground and make this country about as unattractive a place to set up any business (Not alone the high end knowledge based enterprise sh*ite the government like to spout on about) as she is.

After Craig Barret speaking about how Ireland no longer offers the type of skilled workforce most corporations are looking for, her response is to dumb down value of a degree further.

She is a fu*king joke.:mad::mad:

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Laminations

donegalfella wrote: »

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Once again you are correct in pointing out government ineptitude but (to link this with another thread) Coughlans f***ed up idea does not equal 'all government is bad'. It simply means Coughlan is sh1t at her job as per usual and this FF government need to be removed.

mickstupp

In her letter, Ms Coughlan asks college chiefs to accept students with a grade E in higher level for entry purposes.

If it's entry to a course which doesn't require any maths, I don't see why this is a problem. But then I also don't see why my course, which doesn't involve any foreign languages, required me to have a foreign language in my leaving cert...

She also wants them to back her plan to award bonus CAO points for those taking higher-level maths.

In my opinion, this is simply government sanctioned grade inflation.

Bottle_of_Smoke

To offer an opposing view.....

Anyone who got 25% in higher would easily pass (and prob get a C) in ordinary, which would be accepted for the vast vast maority of courses

Is there really much point keeping them out of college? Look at the UK most people don't even do maths. Shouldn't really be a requirement for it for most 3rd level courses

On the other hand, if she wants to encourage people to do higher maths I assume its so they can go on to do engineering/theoretical physics etc.... Well there's no way these courses would accept ordinary level maths or a failed higher level(they'd want at least a C in higher)

Perhaps the former is worthwhile in itself.

cuculainn

mickstupp wrote: »

If it's entry to a course which doesn't require any maths, I don't see why this is a problem. But then I also don't see why my course which doesn't involve any foreign languages, required me to a have foreign language in my leaving cert...



In my opinion, this is simply government sanctioned grade inflation.

Because it is part of getting a basic education. This is what the leaving cert is....if you didnt need maths to get into arts, for example, and you dropped out after 1 year, you are probably unemployable.....and unable to switch courses if you decided to move course.

Agree that unless it is done properly it is grade inflation.........but something has to be done to encourage student to take the maths and science subjects and not just the so called "easy" options to make up points

Bottle_of_Smoke

mickstupp wrote:

If it's entry to a course which doesn't require any maths, I don't see why this is a problem. But then I also don't see why my course which doesn't involve any foreign languages, required me to a have foreign language in my leaving cert...



In my opinion, this is simply government sanctioned grade inflation.

cuculainn wrote: »

Because it is part of getting a basic education. This is what the leaving cert is....if you didnt need maths to get into arts, for example, and you dropped out after 1 year, you are probably unemployable.....and unable to switch courses if you decided to move course.

Agree that unless it is done properly it is grade inflation.........but something has to be done to encourage student to take the maths and science subjects and not just the so called "easy" options to make up points

Kind of agree with both of you. More I think about it the more I think we should just copy the UK system. We have an obselete Junior Cert, they have GCSEs which can get you a job.

fontanalis

Bottle_of_Smoke wrote: »

Kind of agree with both of you. More I think about it the more I think we should just copy the UK system. We have an obselete Junior Cert, they have GCSEs which can get you a job.

Junior Cert? There are probably people still out there who call it the inter. But you're right, it's obsolete. If this was just an opinion she expressed off the cuff it would be bad enough but to write to universities is madness.

thebaldsoprano

t4k30 wrote: »

In saying that they should definetly shouldnt allow people who fail into degree's. Its the way it has always been, either you make the cut or you dont. If you dont make the cut go home and try again ! There is always next year !

Absolutely. One thing they could consider though is offering an Autumn 'repeat' exam in pass maths that such people could take. Any degree offers would be conditional on passing this.

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astrofool

Well the problem is that people don't take honours as they risk failing their entire leaving cert. If the pass level was reduced to say, 30% and a minimum of points awarded, this increases the numbers that take the course, and may get a high mark, especially if they are floating in the 35-40 zone for mocks.

I for instance (for 6th year maths), failed my xmas exam and mocks, and then got a B2 in honours maths at leaving, I had a friend who dropped down at xmas, and didn't do a tap for OL maths and got an A2 in it.

Any Uni courses that require maths can just mandate a pass to get in, the ones that don't, don't.

Getting 30% in HL maths is a lot more work and harder than getting 60% at OL maths, why should one get you a course, and the other doesn't?

jimi_t2

That demented old biddy will be the ruin of our education system.

In fairness to us, up until now our second level education system and CAO process was looked on quite favourably on an international level - whatever about our issues in the tertiary sector.

As to the people talking about ''sure a B at ordinary is equivalent to a D/E at honours'' or ''my course doesn't need maths at all, why should I do it?''.

YOU ARE INTENDING GOING TO A UNIVERSITY.
NOT A ''COLLEGE''.
NOT AN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY.
NOT A FETAC OR FAS CENTRE.
CERTAIN STANDARDS HAVE TO BE MAINTAINED.

This notion of ''everyone'' getting a degree or even just continuing on to Tertiary education because we're a relatively well-off country since the 60s/70s is complete nonsense.

Especially with the expansion of the middle classes, we're seeing a massive influx of people who simply are not capable of completing a degree, but can just about grind their way into a low-level course through a combination of private schooling and the institute.

Science has about a 40+% dropout rate after 1st year in UCD. About half of the Comp.Sci year will fail 20% or more of their modules in 1st year. Less than 60% of Arts entrants finish their degree in the 3 years. (Someone's going to ask me for citations - I don't have them to hand, but these are about right IIRC. Please point out any glaring discrepancies).


We're seeing a lot of colleges like UCD being run as businesses, with the emphasis being put on MA's in commerce and MBAs and their ilk. These are the qualifications that have the big companies wining and dining the staff and doing milk rounds and promotions on campus. You're on 25k+ a year from the outset and they'll probably pay for you to do your masters.

Compare that to this years final year science. Most of them are off to work for NGOs or interning for a year, zoologists are off with Project Wallacea (which they pay for) and the lucky ones have qualified for 3-9 years of a (self-funded) MA or PHd before they've any chance of employment.


Now one of these two groups have well-paid and ''respectable'' employment from the get-go, while the other has a hard and thankless slog and will probably never hit a 6 figure income. One group looks to enhance or supplement human-kind with new technologies and medicines. The other seeks new and innovative ways to sell off bad loans and hike up your mortgage. Which group needs honours maths?

(I know I'm being pedantic here, but the political football of ''honours maths'' is an incredibly complex and important matter with a lot of wide reaching consequences).

jimi_t2

Bottle_of_Smoke wrote: »

Kind of agree with both of you. More I think about it the more I think we should just copy the UK system. We have an obselete Junior Cert, they have GCSEs which can get you a job.

Fair enough, they're vocationally orientated to a degree that the GCSE's aren't, but they don't offer much in way of an ''education''.

Ask an Irish student and an English student of the appropriate age and of similar background basic enough questions about the location and capitals of countries of the world, basic years for WWII and an idea as to who was fighting who, to name a few famous poets and authors, who the prime minister/taoiseach is etc...

I saw a report where this was done and while the Irish students didn't acquit themselves well, the UK equivalent was absolutely ****ing appalling. About 1 in 5 couldn't definitively tell you who Hitler or Churchill were. The notion that some of these kids went on to do 'O' levels, never mind 'A' levels is mind boggling.

There's the somewhat saccharine smell of the autodidcat about the GCSEs and their nature of specialisation - people doing things like Nature Studies, Drama and PE as their sum-total exams. Whats that, three to four exams compared to the NINE TO ELEVEN sat during the junior cert? Behave.

gizmo555

Bottle_of_Smoke wrote: »

Is there really much point keeping them out of college? Look at the UK most people don't even do maths.

This is not the UK. Irish second level education doesn't narrowly specialise the way they do in the UK for A-levels, and I believe it's right not to.

jimi_t2 wrote: »

Ask an Irish student and an English student of the appropriate age and of similar background basic enough questions about the location and capitals of countries of the world, basic years for WWII and an idea as to who was fighting who, to name a few famous poets and authors, who the prime minister/taoiseach is etc...

Reminds me of a story a Spanish friend of mine told me from his time teaching in a Scottish university. He had a student whose doctoral(!) studies he was supervising. They were chatting in the lab one day and for some reason the name of Christopher Columbus came up in the course of the conversation. To his amazement, my friend realised his student had no idea who Columbus was. As he rightly put it, "when he finishes his PhD, he'll be very highly trained, but you couldn't call him educated."

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dan_d

http://news.eircom.net/breakingnews/17860483/
Are we actually living in a country of idiots? What are we trying to do to ourselves here?? If this is considered as a viable option, I think we'll have undone any good work with regard to standards in education in the last year or so in one fell swoop.

cypharius

Funny how she isn't suggesting that students who fail higher level English or who fail Irish should get into college. Irish education is allready unfair upon those who are scientificly minded yet no talk so good, this will continue our problem with teaching maths to the youth.

jimi_t2

cypharius wrote: »

Funny how she isn't suggesting that students who fail higher level English or who fail Irish should get into college. Irish education is allready unfair upon those who are scientificly minded yet no talk so good, this will continue our problem with teaching maths to the youth.

Well like, this would go back to a deeper resentment I have with tertiary education from the 80s onwards. The concept of a ''university'' was the ultimate posterboy for social mobility at a time when the church ran the show.

Universities, at their most base, are set up to teach the trivium and quadrivium. In my opinion they should teach the Arts and Law and nothing else. This is often the case in the states where you have liberal arts colleges contrasted with high-end vocationally orientated institutions like MIT (which decries itself as a ''research university'' :rolleyes:).

Business colleges should be private ventures, as most of their qualifications are moving towards a standardised European framework - one which will be defined by the corporations they cater for.

Bottle_of_Smoke

donegalfella wrote: »

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Yeah you're completely right there. I guess what I was saying about higher E = Ordinary C is pretty much off topic. Coughlan's going about this in a really stupid way.

jimi_t2 wrote:

Fair enough, they're vocationally orientated to a degree that the GCSE's aren't, but they don't offer much in way of an ''education''.

Not exactly. GCSEs is kind of like doing leaving cert ordinary level. You know the way if you apply for an office job they say "must have basic leaving cert 5 passes at ordinary level including math/english" - well here in northern ireland they have a similar line but its in reference to GCSE example

The inter/unior cert was prob set up as people went into trades and I think it may even have been acceptable for nursing at one point(might be wrong on that) And nowadays many trades won't accept it so its basically nothing more than state acknoledged summer tests.

GCSEs are also done about a year later than junior cert

Ask an Irish student and an English student of the appropriate age and of similar background basic enough questions about the location and capitals of countries of the world, basic years for WWII and an idea as to who was fighting who, to name a few famous poets and authors, who the prime minister/taoiseach is etc...

I saw a report where this was done and while the Irish students didn't acquit themselves well, the UK equivalent was absolutely ****ing appalling. About 1 in 5 couldn't definitively tell you who Hitler or Churchill were. The notion that some of these kids went on to do 'O' levels, never mind 'A' levels is mind boggling.

Do you know if the details are online, would like to havea read of that. To be honest find it somewhat difficult to believe given I'm in college in NI and the people here don't seem to have any worse general knowledge than people I grew up with in Dublin. Other than the fact Catholics and Protestants have completely different versions of history:D

There's the somewhat saccharine smell of the autodidcat about the GCSEs and their nature of specialisation - people doing things like Nature Studies, Drama and PE as their sum-total exams. Whats that, three to four exams compared to the NINE TO ELEVEN sat during the junior cert? Behave.

You don't have the correct information. In GCSEs you usually take 10 subjects. I think you're thinking of A levels which are the equivelent of our higher leaving cert.

Bottle_of_Smoke

gizmo555 wrote: »

Reminds me of a story a Spanish friend of mine told me from his time teaching in a Scottish university. He had a student whose doctoral(!) studies he was supervising. They were chatting in the lab one day and for some reason the name of Christopher Columbus came up in the course of the conversation. To his amazement, my friend realised his student had no idea who Columbus was. As he rightly put it, "when he finishes his PhD, he'll be very highly trained, but you couldn't call him educated."

I only know about columbus because of primary school. Perhaps its not the structure but rather the standard of education he received.

Flamed Diving

Do you require H Maths to study, say, 3rd level History?

Bottle_of_Smoke

Flamed Diving wrote: »

Do you require H Maths to study, say, 3rd level History?

No, you'd need to get at least a D3 in ordinary level

Flamed Diving

Bottle_of_Smoke wrote: »

No, you'd need to get at least a D3 in ordinary level

Ah, that's fair enough.

sceptre

Where a particular level of Maths isn't a specific requirement for the course (mainly restricted to courses in engineering, computer science and some science courses), all Irish universities will allow students to matriculate and gain access with a pass in Foundation level maths in almost every course. Obviously that allows students with a pass at Ordinary Level Maths to gain at least the same level of access.

Conveniently, I've already listed the third level institutions that accept it here. While the original query is about UL, I went and checked all the other colleges in the country. Most people don't seem to know this, as you'll see from some of the previous answers in that thread.

sponsoredwalk

Bottle_of_Smoke wrote: »

I only know about columbus because of primary school.

You should read up on him to find out what a monster he was

I recommend Howard Zinn - A People's History of the United States.

I would be 100% for the requirement of mathematics for all courses, not because of it's utility in a specific course per se but because of the mental tools it gives you in terms of analytical thinking.

The crazy thing is how divorced people are from the truth.

We have a terrible maths education/curriculum/philosophy & articles like this http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2010/0216/breaking50.html only serve to justify students claims of how terrible math is.

There's no way math should be a requirement until it is taught properly, with less emphasis on the plug and chug rote memorization & more on the theoretical & intuitive thought procees.

Everybody (you know what I mean!) has the mental faculties to reason, not everybody is good at rote memorization & there is no way you can claim the LC is not about rote memorization in nearly every subject!

thebman

I did ordinary maths for leaving cert and got an A2. I dropped from higher level after 5th year as the higher level teacher was terrible. I know a number of people who did the same for the same reason.

I dropped to pass just coming up to mock exams and got the highest mark in the class without actually knowing what the paper looked like or the differences between the two.

The actual higher level teacher was a qualified maths teacher and did know his stuff but was not a good teacher.

I went on to do a course that was more than 50% composed of maths and came out with a high 2.1 barely missing out on a first. I found once I got to college and was thrown in the deep end I was actually able to just do the maths a lot easier. More importantly, I have always been able and found it easier to apply it to more practical problems like in Robotics, Image processing, Neural Networks, probability and statistics.

I think the problem is both in the way we teach maths and the quality of teachers teaching it. I'm completely opposed to letting people who fail honours in to colleges. Its not fixing the problem, its trying to mask it. The problem of course is harder to solve.

Marky Coughlan has shown so far that she is incompetent in both her most recent positions. I'm not sure how she performed in the Department of Agriculture or before that but at the moment, if she was running in my area, no way could she ever get my vote and if I was in FF, I'd be asking why she is in this prominent, important position when she is clearly not up to the job when this is how she tries to solve problems.

AlekSmart

Now one of these two groups have well-paid and ''respectable'' employment from the get-go, while the other has a hard and thankless slog and will probably never hit a 6 figure income. One group looks to enhance or supplement human-kind with new technologies and medicines. The other seeks new and innovative ways to sell off bad loans and hike up your mortgage. Which group needs honours maths?

(I know I'm being pedantic here, but the political football of ''honours maths'' is an incredibly complex and important matter with a lot of wide reaching consequences).

Well said jimi T2.

As concise and accurate a summation as could be provided by the most qualified of thoughtful folk !

Pure True too

Liam Byrne

As with most of Coughlan's utterances, it simply doesn't add up.

amacachi

**** it, why should there be any restrictions on who can get into any course in college? Let everyone do what they want, let's not test anyone.

dan_d

thebman I think you've hit the nail on the head. The biggest part of our problem is the teaching of maths. Which I think feeds back into the overall training of secondary school teachers in this country, but that's a problem for another thread!
I did HL JC maths, and got C - only because I had a grind. I then went on to do HL LC maths and got a B3 with no grind. Obviously I had a completely different teacher for LC than JC. In fact, I remember getting 50% in my end of year 5th year exam and telling him at the start of 6th year that I thought maybe I should drop to pass....and he told me not to be so ridiculous, I was perfectly capable of doing honours.Fantastic teacher.
Of course what Mary Coughlan is blindly ignoring is the following......the teaching council of Ireland recently advised that having a degree with a high mathematical content such as engineering etc (speaking as one myself) does not entitle you to teach maths. This decision was made around Feb this year I believe. However if this is the case then most of the teachers in the current secondary schools (I believe a figure of 60% was quoted in papers) should be pulled out of teaching maths instantly.That's obviously not happening...!Furthermore,there are a large number of people who started HDips a couple of years ago with maths based degrees that were acceptable at the time,are now graduating and being told, sorry, you can't teach, your degree isn't sufficient. Even though they now have the required teaching qualification.Personally I know a number of economics and business grads teaching HL maths in schools for years - how are they qualified to teach maths?
Makes you seriously wonder.Mary Coughlan is showing her level of ignorance with regards to any kind of standards or knowledge of what is contained in various degrees. While I am not myself in favour of allowing anyone with any kind of maths degree just go ahead and be teachers, as they're not necessarily any good at it, I definitely think we're operating one set of rules for some people, and another for other people.The bigger problem is the standard of our teaching - overall, not just maths - and how we train teachers. Not the statistics that tell us who's not getting into college courses.

Spiritoftheseventies

Sorry but is honours maths a requirement for non maths at third level. And are we to believe that college heads can't make the distinction between a fail in Honours maths and a pass in Pass maths.
Totally different.

ChocolateSauce

She didn't consider instead maybe trying to improve the teaching of maths, did she? Or encourage over-achievers who aren't up to the challenge to be sensible and take O level? She went straight to the only people who shouldn't be responsible in some way for the failure of LC students! :mad:

I knew I needed a good mark in maths to do science, but I did O level because I'm very bad at maths and I felt it was unrealistic for me to attempt higher. But if I'd not gotten the needed mark, I'd have repeated the LC to overcome my failure, not ask the colleges to look the other way- and I'm sure most serious LC students feel the same.

ChocolateSauce

Spiritoftheseventies wrote: »

Sorry but is honours maths a requirement for non maths at third level. And are we to believe that college heads can't make the distinction between a fail in Honours maths and a pass in Pass maths.
Totally different.

That isn't what the colleges are thinking- they're thinking "We don't want to admit a student who couldn't be arsed or wasn't able to pass the single most important subject in the LC, or to be sensible enough to do O level."

Spiritoftheseventies

ChocolateSauce wrote: »

That isn't what the colleges are thinking- they're thinking "We don't want to admit a student who couldn't be arsed or wasn't able to pass the single most important subject in the LC, or to be sensible enough to do O level."

At present, colleges will not accept students who fail maths at either level for most courses. The Minister says the fear of failing higher-level is forcing many students to drop to ordinary level.

Taken from this, the implication I'm getting that Colleges will take students who pass at pass maths. Is that correct?

thebman

IMO if anything Ordinary difficulty level should be increased to make it less likely that people will drop to pass as it is the easy way out ATM. The drop is so high that honors students know its an easy A versus difficult pass at higher level.

We can allow people to do non maths intensive courses with foundation level if they are that poor at maths. No way should an honors fail be considered a pass at ordinary level though. I don't see why a high difference between the two levels means dumbing down the honors level rather than increasing the difficulty of the ordinary level.

Tipp Man

P. Breathnach wrote: »

There are third-level courses where mathematical ability is largely irrelevant, such as language studies. There are other courses where there is a requirement for arithmetic rather than mathematical skills, such as nursing and catering.

But let's not debate the question.

Agreed there are courses that don't need a lot of matematical ability, like the ones listed above, however if i am going to do language studies for instance then as a student i have to ask myself 2 questions
1) Am I good enough at maths to do honours, if i am no problem, if not then I do pass
2) is honours maths a requirement of the course, if so then it probably fair to say that the course is maths dependent/intensive. If this is the case and I am having trouble doing leaving cert maths then what hope have i when the uni level maths kicks it. This means that this particular course is not for me, no matter how much i see myself as a engineer or whatever

So if you can do it, if you can't then do pass, I don't think there is even anything to debate (perhaps bonus points for higher level is a debate,they were there in my day)

Spiritoftheseventies

Out of interest in terms of the points what would a pass in pass maths get you as opposed to a fail in honours?

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