I rarely speak authoritatively, but I am fairly confident in asserting that Trinidad and Tobago will not and cannot become the financial hub of the Caribbean without a more mathematically literate, i.e. numerate, population. The report on the performance of students of Trinidad and Tobago on the 2008 CSEC Mathematics examination, which is disaggregated from the rest of the region’s because of the compromised examination of last year, makes for interesting and alarming reading. The report, downloadable from CXC’s website, states on its first page that of the 20,000 or so T&T students writing the General Proficiency exam in mathematics last year, 47 percent of the candidates ‘passed’, i.e. achieved Grades I – III and 40 percent of the candidates scored at least half the available marks. First interesting mathematical fact – of the students who passed there exist a small but not insubstantial minority, 7%, who scored less than 50% on the examination. This is significantly better than the rest of the region where the overall pass rate is an abysmal 37 percent with only 28 percent scoring more than half of the marks. However, for a nation whose leader hopes to develop it into a serious destination for financial services, it is far from satisfactory.
On the Paper 2, which requires students to demonstrate solutions not merely shade answers, only 33 percent of candidates in T&T scored at least half of the marks. The scale of the tragedy becomes apparent as you read through the rest of the report detailing the errors, mistakes and lack of mathematical understanding. On the very first question which assesses fundamental mathematical skills such as students’ ability to perform basic operations on mixed numbers, solve problems associated with income tax, calculate a percentage of a derived quantity and write as a percentage the ratio of two quantities, only 15 percent of students were able to get a full score, the most for any question, yet the overall mean score of which was less than half of the total. In fact only for 3 out of the 14 questions on the paper is the mean score more than half of the total available for the problem, and in exactly one case does it cross 60% of the total for the problem, and this for an optional question attempted by 46% of students. Further, in the optional section the mean score is less than 30% of the total score for 4 out of the 6 problems.
As part of their regular cycle of curriculum renewal and in response to regional concerns and demands, especially CSME, CXC is set for a major revision of its CSEC examinations in 2010. The Basic proficiency certification will be eliminated in all subjects. This will add an additional four to five thousand students annually to the pool of students taking the General and Technical proficiency examinations. In mathematics, the structure of the Paper 2 will change ever so slightly but in a way that will have significant consequences. In the optional section students’ choices will be reduced to picking two questions from four where they now have a choice from six. This will make the paper more psychometrically sound in that having to match fewer items for difficulty will improve the assessment instrument’s reliability. It will simultaneously make the paper more difficult for many students who will have to learn more mathematics than they have had to in the past in order to get a good grade. From the perspective of mathematics education that’s a good thing.
Content wise however the mathematics syllabus resembles very much ones from the late 80’s and early 90’s. The syllabus is heavily weighted in favour of students with good algebraic manipulation skills, note, not necessarily mathematical understanding, while items relating to geometrical reasoning, quantitative literacy and statistical decision making continue to be under-represented. There are no objectives at CSEC level related to topics in discrete mathematics which together with the calculus provide the foundations for work in all computer related and many statistical disciplines, especially those related to finance, industry, and manufacturing. The rationale for this omission is based on the generally accepted belief that the majority of teachers across the region, many without sufficient training in mathematics or mathematics education, would not feel competent to teach these topics.
Further, the syllabus content will not help to resolve what has become an annual complaint of CAPE mathematics teachers in T&T and regionally: that a great many students experience significant difficulty in smoothly and successfully level-jumping and making the transition from CSEC to CAPE mathematics. It is as if their performance on CSEC math was not a sufficiently good predictor of their ability to cope with CAPE mathematics, much as students’ CAPE results do not seem to be a reliable indicator of students’ ability to cope with mathematics in post-secondary institutions. CXC comments on the former in their 2007 CAPE report, recommending that schools need to institute “a more effective screening process…to reduce the number of ill-prepared candidates.” It seems like they are attempting to pass the buck and the blame back on to schools, who indeed appear to be relying too heavily, if not in some cases exclusively, on candidate’s CSEC scores for admittance to their CAPE programmes. Indeed, the research literature consistently shows that when assessments of students’ learning are frequently, closely and clearly aligned with instruction, students’ collective prior performances on these teacher-made instruments are often better indicators and predictors of students’ future achievement and accomplishment than one-off assessments for certification or admission purposes administered by external agencies unless these are directly related to tasks that students will be performing in the future.
After 30 years of CXC’s existence and in today’s hypercompetitive globalized markets to have a regional pass rate in a critical gate-keeping discipline such as mathematics of 37 percent with only 28 percent making more than half of the marks is almost inconceivable. Certainly some of the blame lies in our inability to willingly move beyond our colonial heritage and the damaging legacies of its education system, some with the crises of Caribbean family life, the unavailability, under and ill-timed preparation of mathematics teachers at all levels, and some with students themselves. None belongs to CXC whose ‘business’ is neither teaching nor learning but the assessment and certification of educational accomplishment, or lack thereof. The changes in the mathematics syllabus, effective from next year, are not likely to improve the dismal statistic cited above. It is very likely that the regional pass rate figure will fall in 2010, largely due to the influx of candidates who previously would have written the Basic examination and as teachers and students adapt to the new requirements. Numerically however more students will likely achieve passing grades. This rate however will paint a clearer picture of the state of mathematics education among students in T&T and the wider Caribbean.
So how do we get there? How do we become the financial hub of the region? Firstly we’ve got to set the bar high…“One hundred percent pass rate in mathematics by 2020 (without cheating)!” It only sounds impossible now. Next we’ve got to recruit new and promising talent into mathematics education, inspire, nurture, train and retrain our mathematics education fraternity and address the ways mathematics is taught to every type of student and assessed at all educational levels. Perhaps we need to examine our national curriculum, not to create a new assessment or certification system, but to put into place a sustainable framework for guiding mathematics educators’ thinking about mathematics beyond the sometimes limiting if not disabling constraints of the CXC curriculum. Perhaps we need to imaginatively re-construct a mathematics curriculum that is more appropriate to the needs, desires, realities, and often painful contradictions of life in Trinidad and Tobago. We will need money, ideas, innovation, people, prayer, persistence, and perseverance. Can we get there by 2020? Can we afford not to? You do the math…
On the Paper 2, which requires students to demonstrate solutions not merely shade answers, only 33 percent of candidates in T&T scored at least half of the marks. The scale of the tragedy becomes apparent as you read through the rest of the report detailing the errors, mistakes and lack of mathematical understanding. On the very first question which assesses fundamental mathematical skills such as students’ ability to perform basic operations on mixed numbers, solve problems associated with income tax, calculate a percentage of a derived quantity and write as a percentage the ratio of two quantities, only 15 percent of students were able to get a full score, the most for any question, yet the overall mean score of which was less than half of the total. In fact only for 3 out of the 14 questions on the paper is the mean score more than half of the total available for the problem, and in exactly one case does it cross 60% of the total for the problem, and this for an optional question attempted by 46% of students. Further, in the optional section the mean score is less than 30% of the total score for 4 out of the 6 problems.
As part of their regular cycle of curriculum renewal and in response to regional concerns and demands, especially CSME, CXC is set for a major revision of its CSEC examinations in 2010. The Basic proficiency certification will be eliminated in all subjects. This will add an additional four to five thousand students annually to the pool of students taking the General and Technical proficiency examinations. In mathematics, the structure of the Paper 2 will change ever so slightly but in a way that will have significant consequences. In the optional section students’ choices will be reduced to picking two questions from four where they now have a choice from six. This will make the paper more psychometrically sound in that having to match fewer items for difficulty will improve the assessment instrument’s reliability. It will simultaneously make the paper more difficult for many students who will have to learn more mathematics than they have had to in the past in order to get a good grade. From the perspective of mathematics education that’s a good thing.
Content wise however the mathematics syllabus resembles very much ones from the late 80’s and early 90’s. The syllabus is heavily weighted in favour of students with good algebraic manipulation skills, note, not necessarily mathematical understanding, while items relating to geometrical reasoning, quantitative literacy and statistical decision making continue to be under-represented. There are no objectives at CSEC level related to topics in discrete mathematics which together with the calculus provide the foundations for work in all computer related and many statistical disciplines, especially those related to finance, industry, and manufacturing. The rationale for this omission is based on the generally accepted belief that the majority of teachers across the region, many without sufficient training in mathematics or mathematics education, would not feel competent to teach these topics.
Further, the syllabus content will not help to resolve what has become an annual complaint of CAPE mathematics teachers in T&T and regionally: that a great many students experience significant difficulty in smoothly and successfully level-jumping and making the transition from CSEC to CAPE mathematics. It is as if their performance on CSEC math was not a sufficiently good predictor of their ability to cope with CAPE mathematics, much as students’ CAPE results do not seem to be a reliable indicator of students’ ability to cope with mathematics in post-secondary institutions. CXC comments on the former in their 2007 CAPE report, recommending that schools need to institute “a more effective screening process…to reduce the number of ill-prepared candidates.” It seems like they are attempting to pass the buck and the blame back on to schools, who indeed appear to be relying too heavily, if not in some cases exclusively, on candidate’s CSEC scores for admittance to their CAPE programmes. Indeed, the research literature consistently shows that when assessments of students’ learning are frequently, closely and clearly aligned with instruction, students’ collective prior performances on these teacher-made instruments are often better indicators and predictors of students’ future achievement and accomplishment than one-off assessments for certification or admission purposes administered by external agencies unless these are directly related to tasks that students will be performing in the future.
After 30 years of CXC’s existence and in today’s hypercompetitive globalized markets to have a regional pass rate in a critical gate-keeping discipline such as mathematics of 37 percent with only 28 percent making more than half of the marks is almost inconceivable. Certainly some of the blame lies in our inability to willingly move beyond our colonial heritage and the damaging legacies of its education system, some with the crises of Caribbean family life, the unavailability, under and ill-timed preparation of mathematics teachers at all levels, and some with students themselves. None belongs to CXC whose ‘business’ is neither teaching nor learning but the assessment and certification of educational accomplishment, or lack thereof. The changes in the mathematics syllabus, effective from next year, are not likely to improve the dismal statistic cited above. It is very likely that the regional pass rate figure will fall in 2010, largely due to the influx of candidates who previously would have written the Basic examination and as teachers and students adapt to the new requirements. Numerically however more students will likely achieve passing grades. This rate however will paint a clearer picture of the state of mathematics education among students in T&T and the wider Caribbean.
So how do we get there? How do we become the financial hub of the region? Firstly we’ve got to set the bar high…“One hundred percent pass rate in mathematics by 2020 (without cheating)!” It only sounds impossible now. Next we’ve got to recruit new and promising talent into mathematics education, inspire, nurture, train and retrain our mathematics education fraternity and address the ways mathematics is taught to every type of student and assessed at all educational levels. Perhaps we need to examine our national curriculum, not to create a new assessment or certification system, but to put into place a sustainable framework for guiding mathematics educators’ thinking about mathematics beyond the sometimes limiting if not disabling constraints of the CXC curriculum. Perhaps we need to imaginatively re-construct a mathematics curriculum that is more appropriate to the needs, desires, realities, and often painful contradictions of life in Trinidad and Tobago. We will need money, ideas, innovation, people, prayer, persistence, and perseverance. Can we get there by 2020? Can we afford not to? You do the math…
100% success rate at anything is not reasonably not statistically possible. There is always a margin of error.
ReplyDeleteyes your reseach focuses mainly on CXC and CAPE, but if you back track, the main problem stems from primary school. if important structures in maths are not properly taught at that level, children will have problems building relationships in maths and hence important factors such as critical thinking and reassoning will be out the window. As an educator too often i have encountered children on the various levels in primary school, that have a hard time with maths. maybe u should do a study on the SEA math scores and write an article.
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