LEAVING CERT MATHS AND PROJECT MATHS:THERE WAS more disappointment in store for some higher maths students yesterday as more than 10,000 students sat a paper described in some quarters as "traumatic" and "disastrous".
Students disappointed by Ireland’s deflating performance at Sunday’s European Cup group game against Croatia found themselves similarly outclassed in the second higher-level maths exam, according to some maths teachers. “Students’ nervousness in advance of this exam paper was well-founded,” said Aidan Rowntree of the Institute of Education in Dublin.
“Although many students may have been traumatised on initial reading of the paper, five of the six questions in section A were doable. However, question three stopped them in their tracks.”
Other teachers criticised the language used in yesterday's paper 2. "Overall this was quite a difficult paper, especially given that this is the first full group of students to sit Project Maths," said Eamon Toland of the themathstutor.iewebsite.
Yesterday’s higher- and ordinary-level papers contained “elements” of the new Project Maths curriculum, which will be fully implemented by 2014.
The number of students expected to sit higher maths jumped by 20 per cent on foot of the recent introduction of bonus CAO points for the level.
“We would have hoped for an easier opener to help settle students’ nerves about this new-style paper,” said Toland.
“The biggest issue is the poor wording of the questions. Question four on probability is an example of this. Also, it is debatable whether or not parts of question seven on statistics are really on the syllabus.”
Maths teacher Brendan Gildea also questioned the alignment of the exam with the syllabus content. “Our candidates spent many hours learning about solving trigonomic equations, the sin/cos rule, permutations and combinations, periodic graphs, and none of these was touched. This exam in no way assessed what candidates learned.”
However, TUI subject convener Brid Griffin felt the paper looked worse than it was.
“At first glance it looked difficult, but once you got working on it it was more manageable. It was in line with the format we were expecting for the first Project Maths paper.”
ASTI union representative Brigid Cleary also reported that most students to whom she spoke were quite happy with the paper, although one student in Ennis complained of discomfort with the content of question seven, on mortgage arrears and the family budget. “I’m listening to stuff about late mortgage payments at home all the time. Exam questions shouldn’t be so personal,” the student is reported to have told his teacher.
Almost 35,000 students took ordinary-level maths yesterday, which also contained elements of the new Project Maths syllabus, designed to bring a more practical aspect to the study of maths and attract more students to the subject at higher level.
“Students needed to apply some logical thinking to this paper and were called upon to demonstrate understanding of concepts,” said Bríd Griffin of the TUI.
“It was a bit text-heavy in places. I don’t think we can really judge the value of the new Project Maths syllabus until students have completed the five-year cycle.”
Jean Kelly at the Institute of Education in Dublin said that while some of the language used on the ordinary paper was “slightly unfair”, it was a good exam in general. “Overall, students who didn’t panic and read the paper carefully left the exam hall happy,” she said.
Teacher Brendan Toland felt that yesterday’s ordinary level paper was not a good introduction to Project Maths. “The mix of topics, and the type of questions, was quite different to those given in the sample paper,” he said.
HIGHER MATHS PAPER 2 TRY THIS AT HOME
A property is said to be in "negative equity" if the person owes more on the mortgage than the property is worth. A report about mortgaged properties in Ireland in December 2010 has the following information:
Of the 475,136 properties examined, 145,414 of them were in negative equity.
Of the ones in negative equity, 11,644 were in arrears.
There were 317,355 properties that were neither in arrears nor in negative equity.
(i) What is the probability that a property selected at random (from all those examined) will be in negative equity?
