Education dept yet to wake up to National Year of Mathematics

Updated on: Friday, January 06, 2012

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh might have declared 2012 as the National Year of Mathematics. But the message is yet to catch up with school education department officials.

"He has just announced it. We are yet to chalk out any special programmes for promoting math skills among students," said an education department official in Madurai.

Madurai has a fluctuating pattern in the number of centum scorers in SSLC exams. While in 2009, there were 356 students scoring a centum in Mathematics in the SSLC stream, in 2010, the numbers plummeted to just 108 centum scorers in the district. However, in 2011 students in the district set a record of sorts after 782 of them scored centum in the subject. The district also recorded an overall pass percentage of 90%.

"There cannot be any specific reason for the rise and fall in the number of centum scorers. It happens across the state. But identifying the math talent in a student and providing a scheduled training would ensure that they score centum in board exams,'' says R Selvaraj, a mathematics teacher who also runs a tuition centre in Madurai. He noted that there were good teachers available in government schools as well to achieve the task of pruning students into mathematicians.

Chief education officer S Nagaraja Murugan, however, said that he had already completed a training programme for teachers in all the schools in the district to fine-tune students. "One of the components of the training programme was on how to score centum in maths. The teachers would in turn impart the methodologies taught during the training programme to the students," he said.

He added that they had planned for another training programme for teachers this month.

Times of India

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