FG in dark over Government initiatives to reform maths - Minister O’Keeffe

A Fine Gael statement today on maths teachers in schools shows an alarming ignorance of the Government’s curricular reform initiatives and support for professional development courses for teachers, according to the Minister for Education and Science, Batt O’Keeffe TD.

Minister O'Keeffe said: ‘Reacting to yesterday’s news, Fine Gael today based its latest hollow critique of Government policy on a University of Limerick (UL) representative study carried out among 60 schools.

‘The Department’s figures show that 65pc of post-primary teachers have maths as a major qualification in their degree - still unsatisfactory but an improvement on the 52pc quoted in the UL study.

‘Our figures are based on information provided by the Teaching Council when applied to the overall population of maths teachers.

‘Our initiatives will help improve performance in maths and drive more students into science, technology, engineering and maths courses in higher education.

‘A new approach to teaching maths called Project Maths, which is based on practical everyday application of the subject, will begin in all post-primary schools in September.

‘This year, we are investing €5 million in professional development for maths teachers. 

‘As part of that, intensive courses are being developed for two groups of teachers - those who need extra support with the probability and statistics strands of the curriculum and those for whom maths is not a major qualification in their degree.

‘The investment will be continued in a rolling programme of professional development for teachers until at least 2013.

‘It should be noted that the OECD’s 2006 Programme for International Student Assessment study of 15-year-olds across 57 countries shows that Ireland performed at the OECD average, ranking 16th out of 30 OECD countries and 22nd out of 57 countries.’