ABSTRACT
The standard of mathematics teaching in schools and the shortfall in the supply of candidates for admission to university science departments are matters of national concern. Mathematics is so fundamental to success in the sciences that the two trends are probably connected. Good motivation in the pupils is fundamental to good attainment and fundamental to the desire among pupils to continue with the subject. The public working out of mathematical processes produces the atmosphere of a test, and an emotional tenseness, and often anxiety, which would usually be absent in the teaching of subjects such as English, history and geography. In the training of teachers of mathematics this is a point which needs considerable emphasis. The relevance of all this expresses that both boys and girls, particularly the latter, are happier in co-educational schools, and prefer their atmosphere to that of single-sex schools.
