Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for his comments. I agree broadly with his analysis and recommendations. Young people doing leaving certificate examinations are pretty smart at navigating their way to maximise the points they believe they can get. They will take the subject choice they feel most comfortable with to get the points they are capable of getting. Good luck to them and I am thankful that we have people who can do that. The problem is for us to change the marking system and to incentivise. We know that incentivisation works as the basis of Project Maths. In terms of teaching people maths, perhaps we should be looking at the entry for primary school teachers coming into teacher colleges. It is predominantly a female profession, notwithstanding the Deputy's presence in the room as a teacher. Some young women who have done higher level maths in the junior certificate then drop to a lower level doing their leaving certificate examinations because they do not need anything higher than that. We need to get good mathematics teachers into the primary school system and the secondary school system. It is a continuum and we need to work together to do it. The evidence from the bonus points for Project Maths is great evidence on which to build.

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