Mathematics - a success story at Morant Bay High

While there has been a general improvement in mathematics passes in Jamiaca over the last two years, Morant Bay High School in St. Thomas has far outpaced the national average, recording a pass rate of 80 per cent in this year's CSEC exams.

That's significantly above the national pass rate of 62 per cent among the 23,639 students who did the exam this year.

Mrs. Beverley Hyatt, Master Teacher in Mathematics at Morant Bay High, speaking on RJR's Beyond the Headlines, on Monday, said the significantly improved outcomes were the results of careful preparation, starting in 2009, when she returned to teach at the eastern Jamaica school.

"Good things have been happening at Morant Bay," she declared, explaining that the pass rate was as low as 39 per cent in 2009.

She attributed the success of the programme, in part, to "the fact that I have some hard working teachers working with."

Beyond that, she explained that, upon being appointed head of the maths department, she prepared "a detailed course outline of the syllabus, from grade 7 to grade 11, of the topics to be taught, and I ensured that every teacher got one of that."

It was then decided, she said, that at each grade level, there are regular revisions of the previous year's syllabus, in order to make sure that the students had grasped the earlier concepts.

Significant success was also being achieved in Additional Mathematics (Add Maths) she said, underlying the overall success of the school's mathematics programme.

So much so, she said, that all 28 students who sat the Add Maths exam this year achieved the Grade I standard.

Click on the audio icon above to listen to an excerpt from the interview on Beyond the Headlines.