Adding it up

This year's Leaving Cert results are out and the post mortem has brought out all sorts of moaning about the state of mathematics in Ireland. The government reacted with the decisiveness that is to be expected of all politicians; launching an review conveniently handled by a subordinate so the Minister doesn't actually have to deal with the crisis du jour. While there is a high failure rate at Ordinary level, the rates of honours grades on the Honours papers is up presenting the mutually exclusive problems of a huge gulf in education standards or grade inflation.

There have been various causes and solutions proposed. The lack of qualified teachers is certainly a problem. The debate over the value of the Project Maths syllabus continues. The Minister is using the results to emphasise the importance of rolling out the new syllabus (despite results only being "marginally better"), but detractors say that reducing the course content is papering over the cracks and will make things worse in the long term.

I feel some actual analysis backed up with numbers has been missing from the discussion. First of all; let me start with there is no grade inflation. The percentage of students getting over 75 CAO points from mathematics has actually decreased over the past five years from 9% in 2006 to 7.5% this year. Overall the past ten years, the percentage of students getting over 75 points has ranged from 7.2% to 9%, so there isn't exactly a huge amount of difference there.

What is causing the appearance of grade inflation is that the numbers taking honours mathematics is falling. It dipped under 16% for the first time this year. This is down nearly 3% over the past 6 years. It will be very interesting to see how the bonus points for honours maths affect this next year and into the future. I'll go into why I don't think this is the correct solution in a later post. I don't know how it's affected applications for university courses; that data I don't have to hand. The mean amount of CAO points from mathematics is the lowest of the three compulsory subjects at 34.5, compared to 55.1 in English and 41.9 in Irish.

From the the Leaving Cert data it is clear that the rate of failure in mathematics is startling. However, any notion that this is increasing is unfounded, but that doesn't mean it's not an issue. Over the past ten years, an average of 15.88% of all students sitting leaving cert mathematics across all levels receieved a grade that netted them 0 CAO points. I count CAO points as a more meaningful metric as that's what matters for university applications and I didn't want to count pass grades in foundation. There is a weak downward trend over the last ten years, but this year's results left 15.48% without any CAO points from maths.

Interestingly enough, the failure rates, mean CAO points etc. in Irish are quite similar to mathematics. The only big difference is the much higher rate of students taking honours, but it is the statistics for Irish are bolstered by the growing number of students not taking this "compulsory" subject. 14.6% of students sitting the leaving cert didn't sit Irish, up 6% from ten years ago. From the coverage I've read the dire situation Irish finds itself in has been glossed over. In fact the press release from the Dept. of Education praises the increased proportion getting honours in Irish, ignoring the growing problem of students not taking the subject or its effects on the rate of success they're so happy to talk about.

So what does this all mean for mathematics in Ireland. This post is getting a little long, so I'll leave that for later. We need to ask ourselves some hard questions about what outcomes we want for those at the top, middle and bottom of the spectrum and does the current courses cater for all those needs. 

PREVIEW: I think major change is needed. I really mean major. So drastic that I know there is zero chance of either a risk averse government with zero cash to spend or the teaching unions would go for it. 

The Price of the Exodus

This government has been a long time dying. Now that we finally are getting the general election that the country needs, I find myself unable to participate in that process. I don't know if I would have stayed in Ireland even if things had stayed all rosey, but the economic implosion that has happened over the last over the last couple years really pushed me out. Nonetheless, I find myself part of with will be a large unrepresented minority; the youth that were pushed out by the mistakes out our elders. 

So this all begs the question; should us ex-pats be allowed to vote. Oddly, enough I'm coming down on the side of the status quo and not having the vote for myself. There are a few very clear reasons for this:

1. Ireland has 3 million citizens living abroad compared to 4.5 million living in the State. This poses obvious problems.
2. The case has been made that as ex-pats vote in very small amounts, it's not such a big deal. However, it is a big deal when due to our arcane electoral system the final seats in many five seaters are decided by a mere handful of votes. This means that those few people voting from abroad can have an effect.
3. This has knock-on effects on the rest of things. As postal votes will be slow to come in, this will deplay the formation of any governments and could leave us government-less for much longer than usual.
4. There's the tired old arguement of "no taxation without representation" or more succinctly the reverse i.e. not able to pay taxes = no votes. That doesn't stand up to any logical scrutiny. 16 year olds can work and pay taxes yet not be able to vote. That's of course without even getting into the political minefield that would be unemployed people currently not paying taxes. There is a valid point underneath this though. Those without a stake in the country shouldn't be able to vote. The extent of the stake of emigrants is variable, but there is a clear line in the sand here. Not only do emigrants not contribute but we don't personally benefit from the welfare systems or other state services more than any other tourists would. This line has to be drawn somewhere and I'm fine with it being drawn here.

There's plenty of reasons to try to get people involved who are abroad, but in the end this can only end in controversy. Ireland's extremely high rates of emigration over the past 200 years of our history practically eliminates the idea. 

There are plenty of alternatives though. Michael Martin's proposal for single seat constituencies would help reduce some of my concerns, but a better option might be to either have the votes of ex-pats count in any list part of a reformed electoral system. (I know that's not what Martin proposed but it's an idea!) Alternatively, there could be seat(s) for the emigrant community in a reformed Seanad (similar to the University seats currently employed). One thing that I do feel should be allowed is emigrant voting in the Presidential election due to the nature of the position as the symbolic head of the Irish people. 

That's my two cents anyway. There'll be more of my musing on the first vote I'll miss as I try to vent my displeasure over the internet. Stay tuned. 

The Guilt of an Expat

The events of the last couple weeks in Ireland are nothing less than shocking. So much so that it's knocked me out of the blogging ennui that I found myself in recently. There's so much to say about the mess we've gotten ourselves into that I don't really know where to start. However start I must.

The one thing that has struck me is how negative everything is. Amid all this talk of bailouts, cuts and austerity measures; there has been nothing positive. No talk of spurring on the economy. No talk of rejuvenation. No talk of how to bring the economy out of its death throws and return it to prosperity. I understand that if there was any talk of such lofty ideals it would almost certainly have been drowned out by the cacophony of negativity coming from the media, analysts and commentators in the last few days. However there just seems to be a lack of anything positive to say.

All of this is having a particular effect on myself. Every time I read something about the state of Ireland's finances, there's this little pang of guilt inside me. So given that it's been on the front page of every (real) newspaper, it would be accurate to say that I've been feeling quite bad about abandoning the sinking ship when I did. I try to console myself and tell myself that logically, I saved the state money by moving as I was in receipt of Job Seeker's Allowance. I still feel though that I should be doing something.

What can we do? I have this idea. Unfortunately, I have no idea of how to make it happen or even if I did, I don't think I'd be the person with the most suitable skill set. So with that set of caveats out of the way I can get into the meat of it.

What does Ireland need? Ireland needs money, jobs, good news. In short Ireland needs entrepreneurs. Irish people creating our own jobs, our own success stories would do quite a bit to life the morale of people. The idea is to collect Irish expats together to form essentially a venture capital company aimed solely at sponsoring new Irish companies. In the current climate it should be easy to get the venture registered as a charity in various countries and then those charities are part owners of the company in Ireland.

Its an easy story to sell to people, to try to get people involved in; Irish people pulling together to dig ourselves out of this hole. Ex-pats doing something for the ol' sod and all that. More importantly, I feel that we've become a little too reliant on foreign direct investment. Not just to invest, but to make the jobs. I don't know many people whose response to unemployment is to take the bull by the horns and try to make something happen for themselves. We need to change that culture. Not only that but it's another way of channelling that much desired FDI through takeovers. Believe me, in the tech business; all you need is a good a idea and to know the right people to get the word out there; and Google (or Apple or some of the other big players) will probably buy you up.

I just wish I could make it happen.

George Lee: Vain or Victim?

A mere nine months ago, George Lee was elected to the Dáil. His election was indicative of the mood at the time; the public had become staunch Fine Gael supporters, mainly due to them being "not Fianna Fáil" as much as anything else. Lee, by his own admission, similarly picked FG as they essentially have no prima face stand-point on economic issues like the rest of the opposition parties do, and so would be maleable to his suggestions. This is not unusual; Garret FitzGerald joined FG for the same reason, and nearly managed to transform the party and move it away from it's traditional roots of being the large farmers party. I don't blame Lee for that choice; it makes sense if you want to have an immediate impact to choose a platform that will let you do that rather than joining some smaller party or runing as an independent.

However, FG seemed to give Lee the cold shoulder, and treat him as a sort of circus act. They'd wheel him out to get the crowd in, and then force him to hand things over to the big boys, Enda and Richard, when things got serious. Sure, he's only a journalist who doesn't know anything about politics right? They didn't treat him like a serious politician but expected him to have the loyalty of a serious politician. Big mistake.

Lee is a damn good economist by any measure, as his pre-RTE career shows. Yet FG, were slow to bring him into the fold and let him help craft policy. Why? There's the sense of seniority about politics in Ireland, that age somehow makes you more qualified, that years spent helping people with medical cards makes you an expert on the economy, that you have to do your time in the back benches before moving up. Kenny was presumably wary of the wrath of the other backbenchers if he promoted young Lee too quickly. That would seem to have cost him a great electoral and governing assest.

The worst thing coming from it though, is that now we have a very high profile example of how closed a shop politics is. We all knew about the nepotism, but to see a major political party essentially give up a very well educated, very well known. very intelligent, trusted voice on the economy tells me that these politicians are out first to look out for their own. This is a huge disincentive to experts from all fields to trying to get involved in politics. When people talk about the detachment of politicians from everyday life; this is what we mean! In any business, not only do you want to best people, you promote them when you find them and you do all you can to keep them.

That all being said, I do think Lee may have been a little premature in going. He should have known that politics here isn't going to change over night. He got a front bench offer when he made the threat, and he should have realised the power his high profile gave him to embarass FG. He could be doing something today to help the country but he was too proud and self-rightous to accept the offer when it was made. Who cares if it was made under duress? Practically every decision in politics is made under duress.

Brian Lenhian - Political Badass

The world and its mother now know about Brian Lenihan’s health problems. The man himself has been very forthright about it, giving more details than most people would have politely asked for (cough...TV3...cough). I’m not going to go into well trodden ground about the revelations by TV3 of such sensitive personal information over Christmas (again, the world and its mother thinks they’re idiots), but rather his decision to stay on as Minister. I think people need to recognise the sacrifice the man is making for the good of the country and the effect that it will have on our psyche.

Brian Lenihan is in probably the most important job there is at the moment in this country.  As Minister for Finance, his ability to control and direct spending wisely and to negotiate on our behalf with the IMF, the ECB, the EU and the Irish banks will almost solely determine how quickly this country emerges from recession. Despite being new to the job when the shit hit the fan back in 2008, he has shown himself to be capable and someone who I think could fix this.

Now throw cancer into the mix. What has been his reaction? Essentially, it can be summed up as “Meh, I’ve work to do”. No time off, working from a hospital bed, continuing with his 14 hour days; this man has overnight become a colossus in my eyes. His attitude clearly singles him out as the most badass finance minister we’ve had since Michael Collins.

The effect this attitude has is huge. Not only is the stability in the department of finance good to keep the value of the stock market from plummeting further, but what we finally have now is a vision of a politician who is putting the public good ahead of his personal good. Let’s be honest, Fianna Fáil have endured scandal after scandal over the last 15 years. FF have been haunted with scandals of members both high up and low down accepting bribes from the construction industry in exchange for zoning changes. When faced with the biggest public spending cuts in the history of the State, what do the backbenchers threaten a coup over? Drink driving legislation. The TD who lead this revolt had previously been charged with assaulting a man in a pub. Even Brian Lenihan’s father’s Presidential campaign in 1990 was derailed when it came out that he had put pressure on the President to refuse the request of Taoiseach Garret Fitzgerald to dissolve the Dáil. What FF have lacked massively recently is integrity.

Finally, we have someone who is putting country over not just his own political future (he did that already in his budgets), but also his own personal health. This will do wonders for the political system as a whole as well as providing a solid base of support for the Minister with all the tough decisions that still lie ahead.

Mr. Lenihan, while I may not agree with you on much of your policies, you have restored my faith in the Irish political system.