December 2024 Newsletter – MATHS WEEK IRELAND

Maths Week Newsletter December 04/12/24

Maths Week December Newsletter

Welcome to the December Newsletter

Dear Reader,

As we draw to the end of the year I would like to thank you once again for your support of Maths Week 2024 and wish all our readers seasons greetings and best wishes for 2025,

Eoin

Eoin Gill

Maths Week Founder.

In this issue:

TIMSS - Main talking points from today’s report.
Post-survey draw winners
Seasonal Maths Activities
Updates from Maths Week 2024
Coming Events - North and South
International Strategy Game Championships
Mathematicians of the Month

TIMSS

The 2023 TIMMS results were published today.

TIMSS assesses international Trends in Maths and Science achievement among “4th grade and 8th grade” (4th class and 2nd year students in Ireland. The results show that children in Ireland are maintaining their place near the top of the international rankings. Some far-eastern countries top the list (Singapore, Chinese Taipei, Korea, Japan, Hon Kong) with Irish 4th class pupils bunched in a chasing group with Turkiye, England, Poland and Romania and the 2nd years with England, Czech Republic, Sweden and Lithuania.

Gender

The last test was taken in 2019 and results are broadly the same. There is a slight but not significant gender difference at 4th class with boys outscoring girls. This however widens a little for 2nd years. This has widened since 2019 when the results for 2nd years practically the same.

Disadvantage

There is a significant influence from disadvantage with DEIS schools performing significantly lower than non-DEIS schools.

Distribution

The distribution of achievement is narrower that many comparable countries. This means that Ireland’s lower achieving students are performing better than comparable countries for instance, England.

There has been an improvement in numbers achieving higher scores, which has been a concern for Ireland.

Northern Ireland and TIMSS

Northern Ireland did not participate in TIMSS 2023. However in 2019 4th class pupils in the North ranked just above England and Ireland

Conclusion

While we need to be careful in drawing sweeping conclusions from such reports, the results are a testament to the work of pupils and teachers and are very positive. However, there is room for improvement and efforts must be made to get from European top-tier to global top-tier.

There will be special focus in the coming months on understanding the slip in performance among girls. It is likely that this is in part related to spatial/visual awareness that has been highlighted here before and that a lot of Maths Week activities seek to address.

The socio-economic gap is much greater than the gender gap and greater efforts must be made to close the gaps in educational inequality.

MATHS WEEK POST-SURVEY DRAW WINNERS

Christmas is coming early for the winners of our latest draw. A Samsung Galaxy Tablet will be sent to the three lucky winners chosen at random from our post-event survey responses.

Winners of the post survey draw-

Ms Caroline Morley, Educate Together Carrigaline, Co Cork

Ms Jackie Breen, St. Patrick's Special School, Drumgoold, Enniscorthy, Co Wexford

Ms Maeve Cairns, St Oliver Plunkett's Primary School, Co Antrim

Check out our Advent Maths Calendar with daily activities for all!

News

Maths Eyes

The Maths Eyes 2024 competition is now closed with over 300 entries across all categories. Thanks to all who submitted entries. Judging will take place in January.

Maths Week Events - What the people said and did

The Maths Week pre- and post-surveys, with over 3,000 respondents, gave us valuable information for future development of Maths Week. Teachers emphasized importance of interdisciplinary connections (97%) and role models' importance (97%). A wide range of activities were organised by teachers across the island. Activities like Maths Trails and MathsWeekTV remained popular. Feedback also highlighted barriers like transport costs, teacher cover and scheduling conflicts. We have begun to address some points such as earlier release and promotion of resources, more events including MathsWeekTV for younger students and more tailored resources for students with special needs. Overall, results reflect positive engagement with many echoing the responses “Maths Week is great for all pupils; they get a chance to see the relevance of Maths in their everyday lives.” and “I have developed a more inspirational and motivational style of teaching to increase student engagement, and it is having an effect.”. We are still analysing the feedback from 2024 and will publish more findings in the new year.

Events

Sentinus Young Innovators

Sentinus Young Innovators is a science and engineering project exhibition for post-primary students in Northern Ireland. It is one of the largest events of its kind in the UK, providing an opportunity for young people to showcase their STEM projects and compete for a range of awards. The Maths Week team were pleased to support the event at Belfast Metropolitan’s Springfield Road Campus on 29th November to witness the high standard of student work and present some problem-solving activities.

BT Young Scientist Competition

The BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition (BTYSTE) 2025 is an annual science and technology competition for secondary school students across the island. The 2025 exhibition will take place from January 8-11, 2025, in Dublin.

Some Key dates

13th December 2024- Upload of 3-minute video

8th January 2025 – 3pm to 6pm- Round 1 Judging
9th January 2025 – 9am to 1pm- Round 2 Judging
9th January 2025 – 2pm to 6pm- Round 3 Judging
10th January 2025 – 9am to 12pm- Round 4 Judging (if needed)

Dyscalculia Conference for Northern Ireland

A conference on Dyscalculia will be held on 17th January 2025 , 9:30 am onwards. The conference will focus on the different types of learning difficulties faced by those trying to learn maths and how we can affectively manoeuvre around these difficulties.

NI Science Festival

Teachers and schools in Northern Ireland will have to wait until February 2025 for the 10th Northern Ireland Science festival in February happening in more than 50 venues and already there are some great events listed.

The Maths Week team will also be presenting a number of events

The Royal Institute of Science

The Royal Institution Christmas Lectures are an annual series of lectures on a single scientific topic, presented to a general audience, including young people.

Northern Ireland Raspberry Jam

14th December 2024

In collaboration with the School of Physics and Mathematics at Queen's and the Northern Ireland Raspberry Jam team, these free monthly events involve tinkering, coding, electronics and generally just having a stack of fun making stuff!

Whether you want to try out computer programming for the first time, hack some electronics or just generally have some fun inventing, we have something for everyone!

All equipment is provided and we have activities for ages 6-106, from complete beginners right up to seasoned Pi experts.

Activities

Games and more

Check on our website for games related to the upcoming festive season and more

Click here for more

Download your Maths Week Participation Certificates

There are Maths Week certificates available to download on our website for Pre-School, Primary School and Secondary School.

Click Here for more

Calling All Strategy Games Enthusiasts

Fancy getting involved in Online World Championship of Strategy Games?

Ireland still doesn't have a team for the Online World Championship of Strategy Games, and the organisers have been in touch offering a lower entry fee.

Please sign up here as soon as possible:

https://www.abstrakta.info/mochalunt-2025.html

You can register even if you don't have a team yet, in the worst case you will be assigned to one.

https://www.abstrakta.info/mochalunt-2025.html

Mathematician of the month

Tigran Tchrakian

Theoretical physicist Tigran Tchrakian was born

in London and was educated at Imperial College

and the University of Edinburgh. Most of his career

has been spent at Maynooth and the DIAS, where he

supervised several PhDs. His research has focussed

on classical solutions of equations of motion in

field theory: Yang-Mills-Higgs systems, instantons,

monopoles and skyrmions.

Adele Marshall

Statistician Adele Marshall was born in Fermanagh

and was educated entirely at the University of Ulster

at UU Jordanstown. Her career has been spent at

QUB, where she has supervised numerous PhDs.

Her interests are in statistical modelling, advanced

data analytics, data informed decision models,

process mining, explainable AI, digital twins; and

real time analytics, with applications to healthcare,

agriculture and infrastructure modelling.

Maths Week Gallery

We are still collating data on Maths Week 2024 participation. We will have further reports in our next newsletter. In the meantime below are pictures of some events.

You can see more pictures on our gallery

Visit Picture Galleries

If you have pictures you would like to share, please use our social media channels or email mathsweek.wd@setu.ie

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