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"South Africa is significantly underperforming in education, particularly mathematics teaching and learning. Fundamental reforms are needed in the public sector. Business leaders need to incorporate an understanding of private education and other market experiments and schooling innovations in their overall perspective and priorities for intervention and reform.   Read more in a new CDE Insight, MATHEMATICS OUTCOMES IN SOUTH AFRICAN SCHOOLS: What are the facts? What should be done? "

"Mathematics and science at school are vital to higher education, skilled jobs, and the national economy. For this reason, CDE has taken a sustained interest in the performance of the South African schooling system in these subjects. This paper summarises the results of four statistical analyses of Senior Certificate and National Senior Certificate results since 1998. Conducted by Professor Charles Simkins, they provide important new insights into the mathematics and science performance of South African schools, and identify key policy issues arising from the research."

Description of SARS terminology made easy

"The virtual school videos for South African learners in the category "maths". The fun way to learn maths! Make sure to have a look at the entire list from top to bottom! "

Lesson plan idea: Using this infographic, the students can create a similar breakdown of costing for our South African scenario. And they can do a comparison of what it cost to study here and overseas. 

In order to ascertain the real-life situations that teachers, as stakeholders, would find suitable and appropriate to deal with in Mathematical Literacy (a compulsory subject for students who are not doing Mathematics at the Further Education and Training level of the South African education system), we embarked on a study known as the Relevance of School Mathematics Education (ROSME). The principle underpinning this article is that there are times when it is necessary to assess the functionality and quality of questionnaires used to ascertain affective domain issues. The study provides an analysis technique which is not affected by the sample of individuals completing a questionnaire, provided that the instrument meets particular requirements. It thus improves the rigour of measurement. Various statistics obtained in this study showed that the instrument used to determine the real-life situations which teachers prefer for Mathematical Literacy reasonably identifies this variable. However, it is cautioned that much more care needs to be exercised in construction of such instruments. The results also indicated the real-life situations which teachers most and least preferred to be included in Mathematical Literacy, providing useful information for policy-makers and textbook authors on contextual situations to be included in learning materials.

Our official outside blog for advocacy for maths literacy for parents and learners. It also house our automated maths lit links from our South African mathsliteracy teachers network and bits and pieces for learners to nibble on.

The module Teaching and Learning Mathematics in Diverse Classrooms is intended as a guide to teaching mathematics for in-service teachers in primary schools, but is suitable for maths tachers accross the curriculum. It is informed by the inclusive education policy (Education White Paper 6 Special Needs Education, 2001) and supports teachers in dealing with the diversity of learners in South African classrooms.

I am just busy catching up on some old bookmarking of ML research articles

Great resoruces. Maybe we can change it for South African cricket scores?

Mathematics is used in interesting, and often less than accurate, ways. Newspapers present graphs showing apparently correlated variables, but with a little thought, some of the time you will find that whilst it looks like two variables are connected, there is actually no cause and effect. Sometimes this is because there is a third factor causing the movements in the variables - for example, if it is hot and sunny, sales of sunscreen lotion increase, as do sales of air-conditioners. If you plot these sales against each other, you find a correlation. However, they are only connected because of a third variable, the summer weather. Of course, an unscrupulous media can draw connections where they don't exist for more political ends, such as blaming an increase in crime on the sales of hooded sweatshirts. And politicians have been known to confuse cause and effect, thinking that a local crime increase is due to the increased police presence, rather than the other way around.

I created this page and guide to assist parents in helping their children make choices between maths and maths literacy at gr 9 level.

I created this page and guide to assist parents in helping their children make choices between maths and maths literacy at gr 9 level. It has a powerpoint presentation which can be used for parent evenings (with a cool joke...) Feel free to adapt and improve.