Tag: UNEB

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“A Problem Well Stated is Half Solved”. These words by Charles Kettering, who was head of research at General Motors from 1920 to 1947, are still valid. Mathematics remains an uphill task for learners, teachers and countries because it has a direct impact on the economy in terms of future of work and innovations.

In Uganda, Primary Leaving Examination (PLE) released by UNEB do no lie.  A few highlights

• Why SST remains best done subject as Maths eludes pupils (Monitor, 2018)
• More pupils get First Grade as scores for Maths, English drop (Monitor, 2020)
• Primary school teachers fail Mathematics (Monitor 2018)

Here are some of the reasons from the boldungu data analytics

1. Inability to understand the right concept  – our data shows that students struggle to understand concepts. For instance decimal number system is built on simple groups of ones, and tens.  When dealing with other number systems such as binary, the grouping just changes to ones and twos. Alas, most students will apply all mechanical means to remember each number system separately and this does not scale.
2. Failure to understand the meaning of symbols – mathematics is about problem solving, and stating the problem using symbols is one way of making it precise.  Good mastery of symbols is challenge for many learners and we have seen learners fail the same question when presented differently using different symbols
3. Inability to understand the root of principles – strong connection between mathematics and the learner can only be created if the underlying principle resonates with the learners.   Here cost price, selling price, profit and loss are the most obvious examples.  Many learners have been given the formula to get the profit, and loss but find it hard to apply the simple principle that if you buy and sell at lower value, you loose money or if you buy and sell and high price you gain. We have seen many cases where learners are just eager to add or subtract values with no regard to underlying principle. Alter the question a bit, and the formula fails to work.
4. Lack of fluency in using operators and procedures  – Application of operators to process problems is a must have skill to excel in mathematics. For instance, reducing fractions, expanding numbers and many other concepts largely play around with operators.
5. Lack of comprehensive knowledge – concepts in mathematics relate to each other. We have seen situations where students think about mathematics in terms of islands. A student will fail to arrive at the final result by applying say long division because he or she thinks long division must be used only when asked to use it.

As said “A Problem Well Stated is Half Solved”, and that is how boldungu design principles came into action. Some call it a game, and others call it real mathematics. Whatever it is, our target remain the same – deal with the inherent challenges low grades in mathematics at national examinations, poor application of mathematics in real life, and long term applicability.