The recent resignations of two respected mathematicians from the group redesigning Leaving Certificate maths, and the criticisms they have made of how that process was run, should alarm anyone concerned with the future education of Irish young people.
Aoibhinn Ní Shúilleabháin of DCU and Pauline Mellon of UCD both concluded they could not put their names to draft specifications they consider incoherent and, in places, mathematically inaccurate. Whole areas of content, from geometric proof to complex numbers, have been cut, and rigour reduced across foundation, ordinary and higher level. Their accounts of the process behind the drafts, where they say decisions went unrecorded, expert corrections were ignored and minutes rarely reflected what was said, are troubling. Similar frustrations have surfaced in the English review group and across the science subjects, whose members describe a tightly controlled process in which the important decisions felt settled in advance.
The response from the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment and from Minister for Education Hildegarde Naughton has been unsatisfactory. The drafts, they insist, are not final. A three-month public consultation, now under way, will identify whatever needs further work. The Minister has added that significant changes remain possible and that there will be no change to the maths exam itself for a number of years.
That is simply not true. The revised maths course is due in classrooms in September 2027, less than a year away. Before then it must be signed off, teachers trained and textbooks written, which means the current consultation is close to the last real chance to alter anything of substance. The Minister’s talk of years refers only to the first examination in 2029, not to the far nearer moment when the course is locked in. Consultation at this stage can only tweak, not redesign, which is precisely the critics’ point. Such obfuscation does not inspire confidence or trust.
READ MORE
We have been here before. Last year, University of Limerick lecturer Trevor Hickey resigned from the construction studies group during its consultation, warning the subject had been stripped of its scientific character. The subject rolled out this September, renamed and, by his account, diluted. The safeguard the Minister now invokes did not work then.
There is understandable frustration with much of the present Leaving Certificate curriculum, with reform and renewal clearly required. The most recent Pisa survey of 15-year-olds showed the scale of the challenge facing educators, with falling levels of reading and maths. But it would be folly to ignore the sharp criticisms that experts in the field have made of this process and its outcome. Their call for a pause in the implementation schedule should now be heeded.
