Incentivising the study of advanced mathematics: A comparative analysis of Ireland and Queensland

There are substantial and ongoing concerns in the international secondary and tertiary education sectors about the number of students choosing advanced or higher-level mathematics at upper secondary level. Declining enrolments in the last two years of secondary school in higher-level mathematics is seen as a major concern for the future of STEM education. Due to these concerns incentives have been introduced internationally to arrest this decline. In Ireland, the bonus points initiative came into effect in 2012, whereby students were awarded 25 additional points if they obtain a score of 40% or more in higher-level mathematics in a terminal nation-wide examination. These additional 25 points are then added to their total points score from all subjects and this score dictates whether they gain entry to the tertiary course of their choice. However, research conducted into the effectiveness of this policy has identified numerous issues including students not suitable for higher-level mathematics pursuing it and as a result higher-level teachers are facing a much wider range of abilities in their mathematics lessons. This led the authors to look internationally to see if lessons could be taken from other jurisdictions that had incentivised the study of higher-level mathematics. In Queensland, Australia, higher-level mathematics is also incentivised through the use of bonus points. In this case, a student who passes higher-level mathematics in Year 12 will receive two bonus points towards their university entrance score. While these policies appear to be very similar in nature, the primary difference across the two jurisdictions is the weighting of the bonus points. In this paper we will look at the impact that these incentives have on students’ decisions to pursue higher-level mathematics in both jurisdictions, and determine if each jurisdiction can learn lessons from the variations in the way bonus points policies are implemented.