Maths Week Children's Budget
Budget day in the Republic of Ireland is on 10 / 10 /2017 and Children from Bally Shannon National School in Kildare played the role of government in preparing their own budget and highlight the importance of maths in everyday life. They were asked to allocate €100 as this could easily be expressed as percentages.
The children from 5th & 6th Class (11-12 years) chose the following categories for spending
- Health
- Social Welfare
- Garda & Army
- Housing
- Sport & Leisure
- Education
- Energy
- Infrastructure
Newstalk 106FM intrepid reporter Henry McKean interviewed the children to explore their motivations in allocating the money and also their attitudes towards maths.
After considering as a class what categories should be considered they reflected individually on the relative importance of each heading. Then they formed into groups of 4 and 5 and discussed how to allocate a nominal €100.
There was much debate and trading and compromise and they worked out the relative proportions. Then each groups allocations were entered on a spreadsheet on the interactive board and the overall class averages were computed.
The overall allocation of the pupils from Ballyshannon NS was:
- Health 22%
- Social Welfare 8
- Garda & Army 8
- Housing 31
- Sport & Leisure 5
- Education 8
- Energy 10
- Infrastructure 8
