Failures in Mathematics have been a major canker in Ghana’s educational system and a major worry for stakeholders in the country. However, the massive investments made by the government and the Ministry of Education seem to be yielding positive outcomes as Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) results have seen tremendous improvements and stability over the years.
Furthermore, the Ghana Mathematics Society (GMS), about a decade ago came out with intervention programmes to address the abysmal performance in Mathematics in the country. The intervention programmes among others included training of mathematics teachers and organising Mathematics camps in August every year for students of primary, junior and senior high schools.
These GMS intervention programmes were in collaboration with the Ministry of Education and Plan Ghana for which over 800 pre-tertiary teachers had their content and methodology knowledge upgraded through professional development. The GMS speculates that due to these interventions, performances in the BECE stabilised as seen from the year 2011 to 2014.
If the BECE performance as indicated by the charts continues, we expect these junior high school students to flood senior high schools and we should expect WASSCE performance to start improving from 2016 and getting better. (Chart was produced from WAEC results).
However, a lot of work needs to be done to sustain performance in Mathematics. There must be stakeholder collaboration among all mathematics professional groups, the Ministry of Education, the Ghana Education Service and non-governmental organisations rendering professional development for teachers, as more teachers need further transformational training. We also need to organise more activity-based mathematics camps for students and make conscious efforts to relate mathematics to real life.
The just ended GMS congress was themed “Mathematics Everywhere - Use of Mathematics for National Education and Development”. Present were selected students and teachers from the Krobo Girl’s Senior High School, Accra Girl’s Senior High School, Ashaiman Senior High and others.
Professionals including medical doctors, bankers, pastors, playwrights, actuaries, photographers among others were invited to show the congress participants how they use Mathematics in their field of work. After the programme, participants were very happy as they found the programme very interesting and motivating.
They wished the programme be extended to benefit the whole country. The Minister of Education, Prof. Jane Naana Opoku Agyemang came around to inspire the participants and presenters which included Uncle Ebo Whyte of Roverman Productions. Schools that need help to improve students’ performance in Mathematics can contact us for discussions. Visit our website at www.ghanamathematicssociety.org
The Ghana Mathematics Society is embarking on a pilot study to provide senior high school students who failed in their WASSCE core and elective mathematics the opportunity to experience our type of intervention that takes students from failure to pass. We are recruiting 150 students who failed their WASSCE Core Mathematics and 150 students who failed their Elective Mathematics into the Meagasa Mathematics Academy (the implementing wing of Ghana Mathematics Society) for a 3-month intensive programme, starting from May, 2016.
Over the years, GMS tutored students (who had F9 in Mathematics) within three months to make A1.The GMS believes that its method works and would wish to conduct a pilot study by applying its methods on the selected students.
President, Ghana Mathematical Society (GMS);
