Conor Lenihan (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail)

Only 16% of those who take the leaving certificate do higher level maths and while that is the average, according to the Pisa comparative study of uptake in higher level maths across Europe, we are not content with that. It must be leveraged much higher to increase the pipelines of qualified people to take up jobs in the smart economy of the future. We are anxious to implement further complementary measures and a robust debate is ongoing within government and industry about the concept of incentivising students to take up higher level maths. Some people favour bonus points for those who do maths while others argue robustly against that.

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