by CAROL-ANN TUDOR
THE TEACHING OF MATHS and English in primary schools is in for a brushing up.
Key to the plan to get better results in the Common Entrance Examinations (CEE) (or 11-Plus), are the strategic deployment of skilled teachers and more teacher training.
This was revealed to the SATURDAY SUN yesterday by Acting Chief Education Officer Laurie King, who said his department would be looking at implementing what he called “limited specialisation”.
In instances where schools had teachers who were exceptionally good in mathematics, in particular, the ministry would be looking at utilising their skills.
This year’s CEE saw “modest” results in mathematics, in which the national average was just 51.4 per cent. More than 40 per cent of the students struggled with fractions, which were featured in all three papers.
King said although the average performance in mathematics over the last few years and the performance this year did not vary drastically from what would normally obtain, the variation was sufficient to warrant new methods.
“We will also be looking at teacher recruitment, teacher training and in-service training to make sure we are up to date in terms of the use of the best current strategies to ensure that the students are up to standard in terms of literacy,” he stated.
“We are aware that not all teachers are necessarily going to be exceptionally good in terms of the delivery of mathematics and so we are going to look at putting a pilot project in place, of limited specialisation in those two areas, and in particular the teaching of mathematics, and that should go a long way in terms of impacting on the students.”
The acting education chief continued: “Some people are comfortable teaching language arts and some people are comfortable teaching mathematics; some are comfortable teaching everything, but in instances where you have on your staff a teacher who is exceptionally good at mathematics, we will look at the possibility of putting limited specialisation in place to impact positively on the system.” l
