The work of our taskforce, led by PJ Rudden, was published today and is available on our web site here. Very considerable work and effort, and an inspiration to us all.
Considerable media interest, including being the very first item on RTE's "Morning Ireland" this morning ay 7am; also Matt Cooper, George Hook and others...
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Dear Chris,
ReplyDeleteHere is a delayed comment on this topic. While it seems logical that engineering graduates should be able to eligible to teach mathematics and applied mathematics at second level, having successfully completed a PGDE teaching qualification, many engineering graduates who wish to follow teaching as a career find that their engineering degree is not accepted by the Teaching Council and as a result they cannot register with the Teaching Council. Registration with TC is a pre-requisite for full time employment as a secondary teacher. In some cases engineers have found this out having spent a year of full time study and teaching practice completing their PGDE, even though their degrees are on the list of qualifications accepted by the TC. The issue for the TC and its assessors appears to be the mathematics content of their egineering courses. See recent discussion on boards.ie [ www.boards.ie > Edu > Teaching & Lecturing Engineering / teaching maths ].
It's yet another example of how the public pronouncements of our politicians and senior policy makers are quite at odds with what goes on in reality. The game seems to be about endless reports, with accompanying spin about "knowledge economy", "smart economy", "focus on science and maths education for technologically capable workforce". Actually doing something about it is stymied by sinecural functionaries, moribund political and state organisations, endless excuses and an massive inertia that takes years to react. As another example how long have we been talking about restoring bonus points for higher level maths ? It costs nothing !!
SO in summary I would suggest that while the report is an excellent document, unless it results in some actions to change how things are done it will become yet another in a long series of glossy publications with no impact, gathering electronic dust on various websites...
Liam Wall
Hi Liam,
ReplyDeleteI believe the team which wrote the report were aware of the TC restriction at the time they wrote it, and I understand that the issue is now being worked...
best
Chris