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Pupils who take maths literacy rather than core maths will not be able to study commerce, engineering or medicine at some top universities. File photo: Supplied
Durban – Pupils who take maths literacy rather than core maths will not be able to study accounting, commerce, engineering, medicine or the sciences at some major universities – irrespective of how well they do in matric.
The debate over whether maths literacy is the inferior subject has been reignited by the KwaZulu-Natal Education Department’s recently ordering schools not to allow their science and accounting pupils to drop core maths.
The head of department, Nkosinathi Sishi, said schools that persisted in permitting pupils to do so were trying to protect their Grade 12 pass rates.
Sishi emphasised that pupils wanting to pursue careers in the “scarce skills sector” needed to master core maths to earn their degrees.
Educationists have repeatedly expressed concern about the dwindling number of pupils taking core maths.
Whereas core maths content was abstract and technical, maths literacy taught pupils to read charts and calculate percentages in everyday life situations.
Tim Gordon, the head of the Governing Body Foundation, said while it was sensible to suggest that a pupil should avoid taking science without maths, he did not believe it was critical for accounting pupils.
“There is a large amount of arithmetic in accounting, but no maths in the narrow sense of the word. Some may differ with my opinion, but having taught accounting at matric level, I found no need for a pupil to have taken ‘higher order’ maths in order to cope with accounting,” he said.
While Sishi believed that maths literacy had its merits, according to the admission requirements of the University of KZN, UCT and the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), it meant prospective students would not have access to many programmes.
For each of the 16 BSc degrees offered by UKZN’s College of Agriculture, Engineering and Science, core maths is a must. Prospective UKZN BCom students also need to have taken core maths and to have earned a pass mark of at least 60 percent.
Core maths is also needed to enrol for a Bachelor of Business Science, Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery at UKZN. However, UKZN Bachelor of Laws (LLB) applicants may have done maths literacy in Grade 12, with a minimum pass mark of 60 percent.
To pursue a degree in engineering and the built environment at Wits, core maths is a necessity.
Prospective Wits LLB students are accepted whether they took core maths or maths literacy in high school.
Maths literacy is also acceptable – but with a pass mark of at least 80 percent – for applicants wanting to enrol at Wits for a Bachelor of Nursing, Bachelor of Oral Health Sciences, or BSc in occupational therapy.
At UCT, maths literacy (60 percent pass) is accepted for entry to programmes such as BSc occupational therapy and BSc audiology.
Gordon said he was unaware of any national policy that disallowed accounting and science pupils from substituting maths literacy for core maths.
The KZN Education Department was, however, entitled to develop its own policy. – The Mercury
