Acting principal Edward Hector is hoping to transfer the energy behind athletic success into academic performance.

With Boys and Girls Championships set to shoot from the blocks in April, Holmwood Technical High will be working hard to maintain its reputation on the track.

But acting school principal Edward Hector also has his sights set on new horizons in academics. He is counting on a turnaround in the numbers for mathematics in the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate examinations this year.

The acting headmaster said like at many other secondary institutions, mathematics was a major challenge. The school had a pass rate of about 30 per cent in 2008 for mathematics and about 40 per cent for English language.

Hector, who is also a mathematics teacher, said he believed students' below-par performance in the subject was linked to primary-school teaching strategies.

"From where I sit, I think it basically starts within the junior schools," he reasoned. "I think the preparation from there is lacking, especially in the learning of some mathematical concepts," he added.

"You will find kids at our level, if you ask them what is a rectangle is, they will say a figure with two long sides and two short sides. That's a flawed definition. It might work for a little child trying to understand, but it doesn't work at this stage."

Hector said the teaching of mathematics concepts should be framed in more realistic terms in order to help students better understand the subject when they graduated to the secondary level.

He said it was also important to find ways to retain students' interest in the subject from the junior stage, "because when they come to high school most of them are turned off from the subject, so it's an uphill task."

He said with the advent of e-learning, there was hope that teachers might be able to use technology to activate true student potential.

Academic improvements

This year, Hector said he was hoping to see improvements in the school's performance.

He said the school had been doing well in the other subject areas, with passes generally in the 80s and 90s, especially in the technical areas.

"I think we have a good crop of students who are focused and we are hoping that they will continue with that attitude and do well in the exams this year," he said.

He continued: "We have been working with our Ministry of Education's regional centre and some students have been attending workshops for mathematics. We are also planning to have one-day marathons in maths, English and maybe a science subject, where students will come in and concentrate only on that subject for one day."

athaliah.reynolds@ gleanerjm.com