Averil Power (Fianna Fail)
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I was going to make a similar point. It is essential that teachers leaving our teacher training colleges at the end of their initial teacher education have a high standard of maths. I believe the Minister is coming at it from the wrong direction by changing the entry requirement from leaving certificate level. I know there are initiatives in Marino and elsewhere to try to get more disadvantaged young people involved in education because we need them as role models in our communities. However, some schools do not offer honours maths and that is an issue. Equally we could lose good young people who could be passionate and brilliant teachers by requiring honours maths. The best approach is through project maths and so that people are no longer petrified of honours maths and run screaming a million miles from it, leading to a problem with maths. However, we need to deal with the problem with maths separately and we need to ensure that teachers leaving the colleges have adequate maths.