The Clare Champion Clare news, sport, entertainment and local notes
THE decision to award an extra 25 points to every student who passed Leaving Certificate honours maths generated much debate this week.
Speaking to The Clare Champion, Bernie Ruane, the Shannon teacher who recently stepped down as president of the Teachers Union of Ireland (TUI), said the current system is flawed.
“This year every student who passed honours maths got 25 points extra. The fear we’d have around it is that while it’d be good for encouraging students and possibly a good idea for students who are going to take a maths-based course, it could disadvantage a student who might be going into another course.
“If someone was going to do a course on French and German but another candidate got more points than they did because of the 25 extra points for the maths, although maths wouldn’t be at all relevant to the course.”
Ms Ruane said that the TUI are asking the third-level institutions to review the matter.
“The colleges are in charge of the points system, they design it, they call the shots and we’ve asked them to have another look at it. Suppose in another few years time we’re short of language graduates, something I think is actually happening but hasn’t been flagged yet; what do we do?”
She said the University of Limerick had, in the past, run a scheme where prospective students for certain courses received extra points for honours maths, but only if maths was a core part of the course.
She said this type of system may be the way forward, but that giving extra recognition for maths across the board isn’t a good idea.
“It doesn’t make sense that it would be right across the board. It does make sense for students who are going to do maths-based courses, pure maths, actuarial studies, biomedical science, engineering, they are all maths-based, but for someone doing languages for example, maths wouldn’t be the biggest skill they would require.
“It would seem unfair that because someone got a D in a higher maths paper they could take a place from someone who might have received better grades.”
