The Task Force on The Physical Sciences and The Rise of Maths Anxiety

The Task Force was set up at a time, it was argued, when the country’s economic future depended on the supply of an increasing number of people qualified in engineering and science (Task Force 2002 Foreward) as a way of supplying the multinational companies being enticed to Ireland as part of the foreign direct investment strategy. This strategy was a lynchpin of government employment plans under the direction of the Industrial Development Authority. Employment of science, engineering and technology graduates had, it was argued, become the hallmark of the Irish economy (Task Force 2002, i) and the EGFSN, in its first report, had identified a shortage of possible suitable candidates willing and able to pursue careers in these areas, thus threatening future prosperity. In this construction of the problem, the narrative runs as follows: in preceding years the government had wisely positioned Ireland to take advantage of advances in technology by encouraging inward investment of high-tech industries and in order to sustain and enlarge the sector, continuity in the provision of a highly-educated, appropriately-skilled workforce was required. However the number of students interested in pursuing careers in these areas was declining and changes in the demographic were also causing problems. There was, therefore, a numbers problem.

There are other analyses less favourable to government of the inward investment or foreign direct investment (FDI) strategy. Conor McCabe, for example, in his book The Sins of The Father observes that the determination of successive Irish governments to support speculative building, from the 1920s onwards, siphoned investment away from indigenous industry towards property, bleeding the industrial sector dry. This collapse of local initiative forced government to devise a policy of luring multinational corporations to Ireland, the aim being to fill the gap in

industrial investment left by policies such as the infamous Section 23 tax reliefs. In this version of events the inward investment drive is not seen as a brilliant strategy to raise the bar in Irish industry but a desperate attempt to balance policies that had worked to undermine indigenous industrial activity (McCabe 2011). I instance this analysis merely to underline the fact that the official narrative is just that – a narrative of events constructed so as to cast government policy in a certain light, to construct a problem favourable to government policy and to justify the analysis that it required.

The Task Force was constructed so as to represent a wide range of science-related educational and industrial interests, a new ‘expert group’ – the ‘partners’ in education: Government departments, third level education colleges and training institutions, second level schools, the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), Forfás, the Irish Business and Employers Confederation (IBEC), the National Parents Council, teachers unions and the Royal Irish Academy (RIA). The report and recommendations of the Task Force were published in 2002. The report concluded that the perceived science problem, identified by the EGFSN, was ‘real’ and argued that unless it was addressed any other money spent on attracting overseas investment would go largely to waste (Task Force 2002 Foreward). In its search for the causes of this problem the Report identified the ‘effects of decreasing competence in mathematics’ (Task Force 2002, 110) as an influence on declining student participation in science at second level and it cited the extraordinary failure rate in the 2001 Leaving Certificate Mathematics Lower Course4 _{examination in support of the ‘decreasing competence’ claim. It did not,}

however, refer to the other extraordinary result of that year, where at Leaving Certificate Mathematics Higher Level over 21% of candidates achieved grades A1 or A2 (85% or over) compared with 14% the previous year! I will return to this subject later and will argue that the 2001 results were an anomaly. Nevertheless it was claimed that:

Students’ perception of the difficulty of mathematics and their poor performance in the subject both act as barriers to participation and success in the sciences at second and at third level. The risk in not addressing the problem with mathematics is that of undermining reform in science education. (Task Force 2002, vii)

4 _{The Leaving Certificate examination is the terminal examination of post-primary education. It is held at}

the end of the Senior Cycle in post-primary schools. Mathematics is offered at three levels, higher, ordinary and alternative.

Thus it was as a result of the risk it posed to the reform of science education that mathematics itself was established as a ‘problem’ in the new education debate. This, I contend, was a turning point in mathematics education in Ireland, afterwards the ‘problem of mathematics’ was never off the national agenda and in time it became an issue for the ‘experts’ of the EGFSN.

The Task Force recommendations included four strands for action in the area of mathematics: an investigation of the decline in performance in Mathematics to be carried out by the Department of Education and Science (DES); increased input by third level into the second level curriculum, with the recommendation that a higher education science, engineering and technology (SET) group, nominated by the universities and institutes of technology, be appointed to consult with the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA) course committee on Leaving Certificate Mathematics; an NCCA review of Leaving Certificate mathematics; credit for Foundation Level Mathematics5 _{(Task Force 2002, 130).}

Significantly, many of the mathematics-related concerns of the Task Force were focused on the Ordinary Level Leaving Certificate programme, a point that needs to be borne in mind when assessing the influence of the Task Force on subsequent EGFSN reports and on the 2005 NCCA review of Post-Primary mathematics. This focus is shifted radically when the influence of Engineers Ireland (see 3.5 below) comes to bear, another ‘legitimate voice’ to make its appearance in the narrative. In addition, the recommendations echoed those of the 2001 Chief Examiner’s Report on Ordinary Level Leaving Certificate Mathematics which was commissioned by the Minister for Education and Science to investigate the high level of failure at Ordinary Level in 2001.

Rizvi and Lingard advert to the importance of examining the evidence adduced by groups such as the Task Force (Rizvi and Lingard 2010). The claim regarding mathematics made by the Task Force is that there is ‘a problem with the growing decline in mathematics performance’ (Task Force 2002, 109) in secondary schools. Firstly, it must be observed that a ‘growing decline’ implies a rate of acceleration rather than a steady deterioration and, as such, can be read as either a sloppy construction or a deliberate attempt to represent the ‘decline’ as new and urgent and requiring an urgent response. The report misleadingly refers to ‘the highest failure rate in Ordinary Level Leaving Certificate Mathematics…16.7%’ (Task Force 2002, 109), however

failure rates of 22%, 18.5% and 21.3% were recorded in the years 1989, 1990 and 1991 respectively (figures from the State Examinations Commission). An examination of more recent figures reveals an oscillating series of results as opposed to a decline. Secondly, the evidence adduced for the perceived decline is selective and does not look at the overall situation regarding mathematics at second level and the achievements of students, particularly at Leaving Certificate. The report employs as evidence a single set of results, from one segment of the mathematics programme, in an exceptional year – the 2001 Ordinary Level Leaving Certificate mathematics. It is remarkable that the Chief Examiner’s report for that year, commissioned by the Minister for Education to investigate the extraordinary high failure rate in the exam, identified a number of possible reasons for the unusual results, including the 2000/2001 academic year’s industrial action by teachers, and the lack of recognition of grades awarded to foundation level students by 3rd _{level colleges and employers, but the Task Force chose to}

ignore all but two – possible difficulties with the older Junior Certificate syllabus and ‘a lack of continuity in learning due to increased part-time work by students’ (Task Force 2002, 110). The latter reason (in the Chief Examiner’s Report) was based solely on anecdotal evidence from teachers (SEC 2001, 4). That the failure rates of that year in the Lower Course Leaving Certificate exam were extraordinary is true; however, if we examine the results between 1992 and 2001 we will see that the failure rate in the examination did not follow any single trend; instead it oscillated from high to low and no regular pattern is to be perceived. Subsequently the unusually high failure rate of 2001 was not replicated in later years (to 2012). Equally the Task Force did not address itself to the other extraordinary results of that year – the remarkable increase in the number of higher level students achieving an A grade, also not replicated in the succeeding years. In terms of results, 2001 was clearly an anomalous year, as remarkable for its successes as for its failures. I contend that a select single set of results in an unusual year is not sufficient to prove the existence of ‘a problem with the growing decline in mathematics performance’. The argument that the failure rate is too high and that the original targets have never been met can be made quite simply and consistently from the statistics relating to the other ‘normal’ years. In fact, relying on the statistics of an anomalous year for their shock effect undermines the legitimacy of the general argument. It is interesting to note that in the same anomalous year the Physics marking scheme at Leaving Certificate was withdrawn and a new scheme put in its place because the initial Physics results were ‘seriously out of line with the ‘curve’ in previous years’ (Walshe 2001, Irish Independent, 22 December, 4). The marking

scheme for Biology was also changed. Why then were the Mathematics results allowed to stand? It is tempting to speculate that the reason was political, a ‘shock therapy’ that would enable the construction of the failure of mathematics that was to follow. In any case the anomalous 2001 results formed part of the attack on mathematics education for several years to come.

The Task Force also asserts that ‘there has been a growing concern in education circles across the developed world about the declining competence in mathematics’ (Task Force 2002, 111). It mentions the USA, (where it merely cites the fact that the government has given priority to mathematics) the UK and Finland. No supporting study of the Irish situation has been cited and therefore it is impossible to extrapolate from these relatively unexamined and haphazard examples to the Irish system. Although the assertions here belong to the worldwide panic about mathematics, the case for ‘growing concern’ is simply not made. Instead the evidence cited shows that in these particular countries mathematics education at secondary level does not support science education at third level. No argument is made here to support the worldwide ‘declining competence’ narrative (Task Force 2002, 111).

In summary, the main ‘problem with mathematics’ as constructed by the Task Force concerns ‘the problem of decline in mathematics performance’ (Task Force 2002, xvii) in one examination. This decline is generalised and viewed as both national and international. With respect to the national decline, the evidence upon which the claim is based relates to the extraordinary Ordinary Level Leaving Certificate results of 2001 and anecdotal evidence from Institutes of Technology. As previously argued, I consider the argument from the 2001 results as spurious. It is difficult to assess anecdotal evidence.

One other issue raised by the Report concerns a preliminary report to the Task Force on the comparability of grades awarded to different subjects in the Leaving Certificate examination. The research had been commissioned in order to investigate the claim that ‘certain LC subjects are more easy or difficult than others and that students are being influenced in their choice of subjects by such perceptions’ (Task Force 2002, 164). The report, prepared by the Education Research Centre (ERC), concluded that ‘[s]tudents sitting the physical sciences, along with Mathematics and French, do less well on average than students sitting other subjects’ (Task Force 2002, 173).This issue was not new and had been previously addressed in the late 1990s by The Commission on the Points System (DES 1998) and an NCCA Longitudinal Study (Task Force 2002, 52) had been carried out. The ICSTI Benchmarking survey had also addressed the

issue. That the perceived difficulty of achieving high grades in certain STM subjects has a direct impact on the uptake of these subjects was to become a recurring theme in the mathematics discourse in particular, with calls coming from the Task Force, Engineers Ireland and EGFSN, (EGFSN 2008b; McIver Consulting/EGFSN 2003; Task Force 2002) among others, to address the ‘problem’ relating to the ‘grading penalty’ that is perceived to be suffered by students taking Higher Level Mathematics in the Leaving Certificate. However the 1999 ICSTI had reported that concerns about falling levels of uptake of STM subjects were experienced by all the benchmarked countries regardless of grading difficulties. Student choice accounted for much of this decline and choice was influenced by attitudes to, experiences of, and the perceived usefulness of STM (Forfás/ICSTI 1999a). There is no simple solution to this problem. In mathematics a reduction in the level of difficulty of the courses, as we shall see later, is opposed by the Institution of Engineers of Ireland and interference with the marking scheme of the examinations is opposed by the Chief Examiner and the State Examinations Commission. The conclusions and recommendations of the Report of the Task Force on the Physical Sciences regarding mathematics were to feature in many subsequent reports from the EGFSN and elsewhere and became, in many cases, a feature of the constructed ‘problem’.