If students from the traditional high schools were poor in Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) mathematics, those from the technical high schools were disastrous.

In 1997, for example, the average pass rate in mathematics for technical high school students was 14 per cent, with some schools registering single-digit passes.

The fact that the students spent only three years preparing for the examination, as against four or five years for traditional grammar schools, was no consolation. Neither was the fact that technical high school students did well in vocational subjects such as electrical installation, clothing & textiles, food & nutrition, secretarial studies and accounts.

Mathematics, along with English language, was a necessity for the furtherance of studies beyond the high school scenario and such low passes were unacceptable.

Principals, seemingly, were at a loss as to how to deal effectively with a problem that dated back to the days of the General Certificate of Education (GCE) when passes were just as dismal. How could they beat this problem of students being unable to solve the mathematics problems in examinations?

Now, after years of agonising, thousands of failing students, frustrated classroom teachers and principals, and embarrassed government officials, educators believe they have found an answer.

A series of workshops launched by the HEART Trust/NTA in 1998 under the Technical High School Project, has begun to bear fruit by producing a marked improvement in mathematics passes at the CXC level in technical schools.

“We are pleased that with the workshops we have seen an improvement in the overall mathematics performance every year since we started,” bragged project co-ordinator, Loveda Jones, in an interview with the Sunday Observer.

“When we did our baseline data in the 1995/96 school year, the average pass for maths was about 15 per cent. After our first workshop session, it moved to 30 per cent average, the following year it moved to about 37. There was a dip the year after where it went down to about 28, but last year, for example, overall it was very good, 50-odd per cent average,” Jones said.

One such workshop, the second for the current academic year, was held recently at the Renaissance Jamaica Grande in Ocho Rios. Seventy-five teachers from 14 technical high schools across the island, along with two each from Papine and Eltham high schools and one from Ocho Rios High, attended the two-day workshop.

The 80 teachers had decided that problem areas to focus on at this particular workshop should include transformation, vectors, earth geometry, matrices, cycle theorem, algebra, trigonometry and graphs.

The three presenters came with very good credentials: Roslyn Kelly, just retired from the post of senior education officer in the Mathematics Unit of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Culture, taught mathematics at Wolmer’s Girls for several years; Donovan Doyley, head of the Mathematics Department at Herbert Morrison Technical in Montego Bay where he has consistently achieved between 54 and 70 per cent passes in mathematics – way above the national average; and Nyron Lemonius, currently a lecturer in mathematics at Mico Teachers’ College, having taught previously at St Hugh’s High School and then at the University of Technology. All three are CXC examiners.

The January workshop was organised following successes in previous ones, and Jones, who taught mathematics at St Andrew Technical and Dunoon Technical where she also served as vice-principal before being seconded to the Ministry of Education, was brimming with confidence.

“Since we started this project, the passes at Herbert Morrison Technical have surpassed the national average every year,” she said. “Two years ago, the national average was 39 per cent, Herbert Morrison had a 58 per cent pass. The following year when the average was a little lower, the school had a 65 per cent pass in mathematics. Although not a hundred per cent, it’s impressive,” Jones stated.

So, what were the problems that for years denied joy to thousands of teenagers, turning their hopes into disappointment each summer when results were released? And what are the solutions that, so far, have worked for the education ministry and specifically for the HEART Trust/NTA via this project?

These were two of the questions that the presenters pondered.

“If anybody were to suggest that the problem is simple then it would be false. The problems that we face are, in fact, complex,” asserted Lemonius. “One, we have the situation of the teacher’s competence being in question. There are some teachers who, for years, never ever moved from where they were before and if you’re not moving, you actually get worse because things are actually moving past you. Relatively, you’re falling behind.”

Lemonius said many students were hampered in learning maths because their parents had told them they did not expect them to do well, since they (the parents) did not do well at maths.

“We tend to pass this on, a kind of ‘head-nuh-good’ phenomenon, as I call it,” he added.

Lemonius also identified a lack of research. “One of the things we hear least among students, and sometimes teachers of maths, is research. We believe that we don’t have to research maths, that you don’t go and sit down and be analytic, sift out this piece of information and that piece of information; so you have no content, there is no basis on which you function,” he argued.

Doyley also placed some of the blame on the teacher, or absence of such. “One of the main reasons is that the best mathematics people are not coming back into the classroom. Teaching is not really attracting them and so we might end up with those who are not as good as they ought to be,” he said.

Kelly agreed: “Let’s face it, a good mathematics teacher has many other jobs (opportunities) outside, so you’re going to lose the good ones, especially when they are in need of a good salary,” she said.

“When we talk about the brain drain, yes we trade now in what we call the human mind, we trade in intelligence, we train people and we send them overseas. There is a market for that, but can we in fact encourage our own people to serve us?” Lemonius wanted to know.

“Also, some teachers are just teaching for students to pass exams and that in itself is not helping. We need to teach for the understanding of maths because if they do that, then the children will automatically pass their examinations,” Doyley insisted.

Furthermore, he said, there were many teachers at the primary level who did not know mathematics sufficiently to teach it well, but because they had to teach every subject at that level they hastened the lessons just to get it out of the way.

Kelly identified the “fear factor” as having negative effects on both sides of the fence. Many teachers, she argued, were “afraid of mathematics” because of how it was taught to them.

“Also, because it was considered that the person who could do maths was a special person who was very bright, people never had the confidence they could do maths. So you have the teachers who were scared of mathematics but had to teach it in the primary school, or even in the secondary school because there were not enough teachers that were trained to teach it,” said Kelly.

“Then again, because the children don’t have the confidence because of how it was taught to them, they also have this fear,” the former education official added.

All three were confident that after two days at the workshop, a rippling effect would again take place when teachers returned to their domain.

Jones believed that to maintain good standards where they existed and to have dramatic improvement where standards were lower, teachers had to be engaged in ongoing professional development. “The teachers with the expertise have to help the others and that’s why we organise these workshops.”

The objective of the workshops, Jones said, was to help the teachers get the skills and develop the competencies so that they could go back and prepare their students.

This year, the education ministry is aiming for a record 75 per cent success rate in technical schools and is offering incentives to schools that attain that figure.

Herbert Morrison Technical, feeling that it has a standard to maintain in achieving an above average pass rate, is aiming for a record 100 per cent success rate, according to Doyley.

“I’m really aiming at a hundred per cent, so right now I’m working on all the students, getting them to work on their weaknesses, wherever they are,” he said.

But Doyley was less optimistic about the national technical school average reaching the 75 per cent pass rate this year.

“I think it’s going to take a good amount of time. It could be happening say, over a five-year period but if they focus at the primary level, I’m sure the maths at the high school would be far better. Children come in and don’t know the basic things, they don’t know their tables, they add wrong, they subtract wrong and so on,” he explained.

Kelly didn’t “want to put a number on it” but said she expected to see better maths results this year, especially with the programme for expanded secondary schools coming in. “So if that happens right across the system and with a numeracy policy being implemented, I am thinking we should be seeing better results,” she said.

Success for the programme so far has been based on certain strategies, involving the facilitators working with the teachers during the holidays to acquire competencies, after which the teachers collaborate in planning, preparing and working with the students outside of the timetable sessions.

Lemonius, whose contribution to the programme’s success has been described as decisive, anticipated some of the problems ahead.

“What we’re seeing happening now is what I call the ‘want it now’ culture, everybody wants it now. We do the same thing in actually solving a problem, everybody wants to see the final answer, but do we actually look at the processes that will lead us there?” he asked.

He questioned the role of school administrators, asking if schools had proper administrations which were focused on the right things, and whether the teacher-training institutions were doing enough to help the situation.

Doyley also had a view as to how the future problems should be tackled. “I would want them to go into the schools and have the workshops in the various schools so we can have them individually because sometimes they are hidden in this big group. Also, you could have workshops in the schools with the children themselves so they could be exposed to other teachers,” he suggested.

He was, however, convinced that the real solution to the problem was in the authorities focusing at the primary level. “The primary level is where I think we need to start. What I think they should do is to take the teachers at that level who are specialists in the area and let them teach the maths to all grade levels in that school. It will improve (understanding of) the maths.”

Lemonius added that things might be bad in education but the situation was not hopeless.

“We are in a dismal state of affairs, our education is messed up,” he conceded. “But if we sit down and acknowledge that it’s messed up and we don’t go searching for solutions that will improve the conditions, then we are contributing to its failure.”

Peta-Gaye Dodd, a mathematics and information technology teacher at St Elizabeth Technical, was one of the 80 teachers who rose to the ‘challenge’ and according to her, the workshops’ technique was a good concept.

“The workshops on a whole are good because when we go to teachers’ college we just skim the surface of the lessons. So when we come to the workshop we are taken deeper, we learn the prerequisites for each topic, we know exactly how to bring it across to the students so that they have a better understanding of the topic,” she told the Sunday Observer at the end of the two-day retreat.

Judith Sedi, who teaches mathematics at Herbert Morrison and who, like Dodd, was attending her second workshop, said the experience continued to be beneficial.

“The workshop has benefited me very well. There is a particular topic I didn’t do at high school and did not do at UWI although I have a degree in mathematics, so when teaching the students there is that gap,” she explained. “Other than that, I benefited a lot from the other teachers who have different ways of teaching the topics, and when we share we all benefit.”