{"id":63437,"date":"2014-07-21T14:32:14","date_gmt":"2014-07-21T12:32:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=63437"},"modified":"2014-07-21T14:33:02","modified_gmt":"2014-07-21T12:33:02","slug":"sas-worrying-mathematics-trend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/trending\/63437\/sas-worrying-mathematics-trend\/","title":{"rendered":"SA’s worrying mathematics trend"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 2014 International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO)<\/strong><\/a> took place in Cape Town in July, attracting the top mathematics students from across the globe.<\/p>\n

Three students shared first prize with perfect scores: Alexander Grunning from Australia, Jiyang Gao from the People\u2019s Republic of China, and Po-Sheng Wu from Taiwan.<\/p>\n

The top countries in the event were China, the United States, Taiwan, Russia, and Japan. South Africa was ranked at 64 out of 101 competing countries.<\/p>\n

Robin Visser, a Grade 12 learner at St George\u2019s Grammar School in Cape Town, was South Africa\u2019s top performer. He received a Bronze medal with a total score of 20 points.<\/p>\n

South Africa\u2019s declining performance<\/h3>\n

Over the last two decades South Africa\u2019s performance at the International Mathematical Olympiad has declined significantly.<\/p>\n

In the eleven years between 1994 and 2004 South Africa finished in the top half of the competing countries eight times (73% of the time).<\/p>\n

Over the next decade, South Africa only finished in the top half 3 times (30% of the time).<\/p>\n

The following graph shows South Africa\u2019s absolute position in the IMO and the number of competing teams.<\/p>\n

\"SA-IMO-ranking\"<\/a>

SA IMO ranking<\/p><\/div>\n

Bigger trend in education<\/h3>\n

What is of particular concern is the performance of South Africa\u2019s general population in mathematics and science.<\/p>\n

The Trends in Mathematics and Science Studies (TIMSS) research shows that South Africa\u2019s performance is very close to the bottom of all surveyed countries.<\/p>\n

The TIMSS is aimed at grade eight students. However, grade 9 students in South Africa started to write the grade 8 tests because the grade eight TIMSS assessment was too difficult for eighth grade students in South Africa.<\/p>\n

In 2011, South Africa was only one of three countries \u2013 with Botswana and Honduras \u2013 where grade nine students did the grade eight tests.<\/p>\n

This did not do much to improve SA\u2019s overall ranking. South Africa\u2019s performance was so poor that the grade 8 students of all the participating countries, except Ghana, outperformed South Africa\u2019s grade 9 students.<\/p>\n

\"TIMSS\"<\/a>

TIMSS Scores<\/p><\/div>\n

Education system failing, hurting industry<\/h3>\n

South Africa\u2019s failing education system \u2013 especially in mathematics and science \u2013 means that there is a scarcity of skills in engineering and related fields.<\/p>\n

According to former Naspers CEO Koos Bekker, the country\u2019s poor education system is hurting Internet developments and investment in the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo get an engineer you need a kid who is enthused about mathematics, and is prepared to study engineering at university,\u201d said Bekker.<\/p>\n

\u201cRegrettably, our education system is so poor it simply does not yield the mathematics geniuses we need to go to university to become engineers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bekker said they had to bring in engineers from India<\/strong><\/a> to supplement their own people in South Africa to execute the company\u2019s e-commerce strategy.<\/p>\n

This article was first published on MyBroadband<\/a>.<\/p>\n

More on South Africa\u2019s education<\/h3>\n

Maths and science in SA: defending the indefensible<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

SA government rejects global maths ranking<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

South Africa stone last in maths and science list<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The results of the latest Mathematical Olympiad follow the downward trend of the country\u2019s performance<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":63441,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3167,26,8071],"class_list":["post-63437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-decline","tag-headline","tag-maths"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63437"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63437\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63447,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63437\/revisions\/63447"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}