Falling numbers and falling grades in LC maths

jimkekk

What is going on in LC H maths the
The numbers have fallen from 19% in 2005 to 16.6% in 2010 and the % getting an A has gone from 20% in 2001 to 12% in 2010 .
In Ord level LC the % taking it is steady at 71-72%
But the failure rate has dropped from 16.5% in 2001 to 9.5% in 2010 Good news or dumbing down!
The % taking the foundation level has increased from 9.5% in 2001 to 11.5% in 2010
Project maths is not the answer as the same teachers who are teaching the present course will be teaching the new course but with no text books!

C__

Im my year of 107 students only 7 do honours and 9 do foundation :O

Digits

Ok so what you're saying is theres very few people doing higher maths and lots of people failing ordinary maths...

Never heard that before.

AlanBr

jimkekk wrote: »

Project maths is not the answer as the same teachers who are teaching the present course will be teaching the new course but with no text books!

I second that...i find the books OK but my teacher is utterly appalling ...he doesnt even have a fecken degree in maths:mad: And the fact that theres only one book for project maths which is basically a load of colours doesnt help either!

ShonyBoulders

I'm in the only student in a year of around 55 who's doing Honours Maths. :P
I'm going to have to nail it too, as I've seen a sample paper for Project Maths and the paper looks horrible, it's all Statistics and Geometry.

jumpguy

I'm 1 of 6 in my year doing HL maths (out of a total year of only around 35, though).

I'm not surprised by the % A's falling, the paper's have gotten much more difficult since the early noughties IMO. You compare any paper from pre-2004 to one post-2004 and they get progressively more difficult (with last year's paper being a bit of an exception, imo).

A huge problem with OL maths papers is people who are doing OL maths but are better suited to FL maths. They're upsetting the whole bell-curve, and hence the earlier high failure rate (now it's compensated for, I think). More can be read about it in the Chief Examiner's Reports on maths.

Superbus

Ah PM is the answer in fairness, my book has a soccer player on the front.

Lightness

If i remember correctly 80% of maths teachers in secondary schools don't have a degree in mathematics. It is perhaps one of the longest courses on the leaving cert and one of the few courses where just learning the answers doesn't cut it. This bucks the trend for leaving cert which in nearly all cases is rote learning. The maths course involves thinking for yourself and problem solving, teachers can give you the tools but you have to know how to use them to find the answer. This is particularly apparent in the part (c)'s of each question which tend to not fit into a neat little bracket of problems but require the student to identify what they are looking for and then identify which skills they have learnt which will provide them with the answer.

Students are all forced to do it so of course there is going to be many who don't have the slightest interest. I think we would see this kind of trend if you forced all students to do any topic they dont have and interest in (look at Irish).

As a higher level maths student hoping for an A i can honestly say i have to put more time into the subject than others. I'm also doing applied maths which is the same kind of idea but is half as long as the maths course (6 questions in the exam as opposed to 12).

Another problem with the maths course is the lack of fun or inspiration that can be derived(excuse the pun) from the coursework as there is no sense of the great history that came to create what students learn and so many find maths mundane and lifeless.

Furthermore many students fail to grasp the power of what they are learning. I find that many HL students are not capable of describing exactly what differentiation, integration, complex numbers or matrices can achieve or even what the answer they get shows they just know how to preform the operations and do not comprehend the applications.

Well that is just my opinion on the matter and i welcome other opinions on the matter and would be interested in other people's point of view on the subject but i think this is the reason for the huge decline in higher level maths participation and grades. Students just find it uninteresting, uninspiring and unnecessary in their future career paths.

r0cks0l1dd

ShonyBoulders wrote: »

I'm in the only student in a year of around 55 who's doing Honours Maths. :P
I'm going to have to nail it too, as I've seen a sample paper for Project Maths and the paper looks horrible, it's all Statistics and Geometry.

I'm fairly sure they'll have a backup paper for Maths for people who repeat next year. Same for Irish. They can't expect someone to learn a new course in half the time.

ShonyBoulders

r0cks0l1dd wrote: »

I'm fairly sure they'll have a backup paper for Maths for people who repeat next year. Same for Irish. They can't expect someone to learn a new course in half the time.

Well it is only Paper 2 which comes under PM, Paper 1 is still our course or so I'm told. Still though, I really dislike the new Paper 2. No vectors or much trigonometry. :mad: You can find the sample paper from a thread in the Mathematics forum, I'll dig it up in a minute.

Link:
http://www.examinations.ie/schools/PM_ATAL_sample_Jan_2010.pdf