DESPITE a five per cent improvement in this year’s CSEC mathematics results Jamaica’s pass rate remains well below pre-pandemic levels, with Education Minister Dr Dana Morris Dixon admitting that performance in the subject “is still not where we want to be” as a deep-seated fear of maths among students continues to hinder performance.

“We are better than we were last year, and we’re better than the regional average but obviously, that’s not where we want to be — we want to go even higher. As you saw, we’re above the regional average, which says that there’s a mathematics problem that we have in our region and that we have to fix,” Morris Dixon said Friday at a press conference where she presented this year’s CXC performance report.

The 2025 public school pass rate in mathematics rose to 44 per cent, up from 39 per cent last year and ahead of the regional average, but remains well below the 54 per cent recorded in 2019.

Morris Dixon believes that a fear of mathematics in some parents and students has been an ingrained hindrance to achieving higher pass rates across the island.

“When you talk to some of our children, you see this fear of maths, and a lot of them get it from their parents because they fear maths too, and it is something that we have to work on really actively to make mathematics more exciting,” the education minister said.

She highlighted new strategies in schools, including a greater emphasis on hands-on activities to make mathematics lessons more engaging.

“In terms of new approaches to teaching mathematics, we’ve been using more manipulatives because the students really do learn by play too and using their hands, and touching things, and understanding the concepts in reality — and not just abstractly — and you’d have seen a lot of work in the schools too. So, we’re expecting the numbers to go up over time,” she said.

She insisted that instilling this love for mathematics has to start from early in order to see significant, long-term improvements in maths scores islandwide.

“…What we realise is, we need to instil that love of mathematics from early because the numbers we’re seeing are really a result of… issues that we’ve had in terms of instilling that love of mathematics. But what we’ve seen, though, in the interventions — especially with the camps and the work the ministry team did in seeing the needle move up, even with students who may not have had the greatest of foundations in mathematics — says that we can do it,” she added.

In the meantime, permanent secretary in the ministry Dr Kasan Troupe also stressed the importance of teacher quality in solving Jamaica’s maths challenge.

She noted that more than 100 maths teachers have been participating in capacity-building sessions with The University of the West Indies, and $21 million is being invested to allow maths teachers to participate in a CXC conference in Jamaica this October.

“The truth is, the system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers. So that single variable that has the greatest impact on learning is the teacher quality, and so our commitment is to continue to retool our teachers… We’re working with our colleges to review the curriculum, to review the materials, and to support the programme of learning for our teachers in the colleges,” she said.

Dr Troupe added that the ministry is moving to embed maths coaches permanently into the education system, rather than relying on short-term contracts, as part of “a suite of improvements” aimed at boosting long-term results.

“A new approach that we’re taking as we go forward — we’re treating that with the Ministry of Finance — is to embed the coaches. So, no longer will we have a few coaches and specialists being on contract; what [the] minister has instructed is that we must look to see whether that can become a natural part of the architecture of supporting the ministry. So we’re moving our specialists from this… uncertainty in how they are employed, into embedding this into our structure in ministry,” she added.