By Davies Iheamnachor

PORT HARCOURT: The Rivers State Government and Tech Girls Tech Foundation have moved to bring to end poor performance of students in mathematics.

The partnership backed by Elsevier MSSF Fund, which is the Mathematical Science Sponsorship Fund, is said to be Innovating Mathematics Education Through Technology.

This was as teachers from public and underserved primary and junior secondary schools were given practical training in the use of Abacus, Rubik’s Cube, Mathematics Games, Artificial Intelligence Tools, and Scratch coding.

Speaking during the unveiling of its i-MathElevate Teachers Workshop for teachers in primary and junior secondary schools, and schools of special needs children in the state, the Founder of TGT Foundation, Engr. Ejiro John, said the training is targeted at improving the performance of students in mathematics.

John regretted that recent studies have shown that there is low performance of students in mathematics, noting that the project is to expose the teachers to new approach that simplifies the teaching and learning of the subject.

She noted that the foundation designed the i-MathElevate Projects to tackle the challenge students face in studying mathematics from cradle, adding that it introduces the play method in learning subject.

John said the workshop marks the beginning of a two-month implementation period, during which trained teachers would apply the new methods in their classrooms.

She said: “We are training the teachers and students to use games in solving mathematics. i-MathElevate is a programme that is all inclusive taking cognisance of those that are depraved in learning mathematics.

“It’s a train-the-trainer initiative, where we empower teachers on game-based methods and other modern methods of teaching mathematics, making mathematics more accessible, making mathematics fun, and helping students to increase their critical thinking and capacity.

However, the Rivers State Ministry of Education, said its interest is to ensure that students in the state do well in the subject area.

The Director of Sciences and Technical Education Department, Mrs Inisefiekabo Tam Job, who represented the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry, Azibaolanari Uzoma-Nwogwu, noted that the project is a form for retraining for mathematics teachers on the state.

Job said: “So, we collaborate with them because, you know, mathematics is not just a subject, everybody needs it. And that’s one of those things that the Rivers State Ministry of Education is looking at to make sure that our students and our pupils do well in their academic work.

“So that’s why she (permanent secretary) accepted when they come up with this training workshop because that will improve the teacher’s knowledge. When you do science, if you don’t do mathematics, you’re nowhere.”