Nearly half of parents don’t know if their children’s maths teacher is qualified, survey

Life

27 February 2012

Over 93% of parents of Leaving and Junior Certificate students surveyed by Engineers Ireland say they have explained the importance of mathematics to their children, it has been revealed ahead of Engineers Week 2012, which runs this week until Sunday, 4 March.

Citing the finding as a sign that parents were starting to grasp the importance of the subject to their children’s career prospects, John Power, director general of Engineers Ireland said Engineers Week 2012 would once again emphasise the criticality of stronger achievement levels in this area in schools. "A similar survey we undertook this time last year indicated that over half the students we asked had not had the long-term relevance of maths explained to them by their parents. Our new survey this year shows an improvement in this respect. Maths is the platform upon which a career in growing areas like engineering and technology is based."

"But with over 4,300 students failing Maths across all levels in the latest Leaving Cert exams, we still have a gap to bridge to ensure Ireland can produce workers with the requisite technical skills. Nearly 50% of parents in our survey were still not clear whether their children’s maths teachers had a professional maths qualification. We need to combine a greater awareness of the importance of maths with better standards and transparency in how the subject is taught in schools to ultimately fill the large amount of job vacancies emerging in the ICT and engineering sectors."

Events during the week include the launch by Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources Pat Rabbitte of the report ‘The State of Ireland 2012 – an overview of Ireland’s infrastructure’; Wargames Light, an ethical ‘hackathon’ highlighting security issues for third level technology students; while Liam Madden, VP of Xilinx gives this year’s McLaughlin lecture on Moore’s Law.

 

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