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Improving participation rates in specialist mathematics after the subject ceases to be compulsory at age 16 is part of government policy in England. This article provides independent and recent support for earlier findings concerning reasons for non-participation, based on free response and closed items in a questionnaire with a sample of over 1500 students in 17 schools, close to the moment of choice. The analysis supports findings that perceived difficulty and lack of confidence are important reasons for students not continuing with mathematics, and that perceived dislike and boredom, and lack of relevance, are also factors. There is a close relationship between reasons for non-participation and predicted grade, and a weaker relation to gender. An analysis of the effects of schools, demonstrates that enjoyment is the main factor differentiating schools with high and low participation indices. Building on discussion of these findings, ways of improving participation are briefly suggested.

R odents are among the most important global pests (Prakash 1988; Singleton et al. 1999a), and are often featured in fiction, as in Albert Camus' The Plague. The black rat (Rattus rattus) played a key role in the plague during the Middle Ages (Scott and Duncan 2001). Farmers in many parts of the world, particularly those in developing countries, tend to view economic losses due to rats and mice as unavoidable (Posamentier 1997; Singleton et al. 1999a). In fact, the impact of rodents has been greatly underestimated and largely ignored in the general scientific literature, with a small number of exceptions (Elton 1942; Singleton et al. 1999a). Competing with rodents for food Worldwide, there are about 1700 species of rodents, but only 5-10% are major pest species in agricultural and urban environments, and even fewer cause problems over larger geographic areas. Some of these consume substantial amounts of agricultural produce (Table 1), and in many developing countries, farmers consider rodents the main impediment to higher yields (Makundi et al. 1999). Every year, rats in Asia consume food crops that could feed 200 million people for an entire year (Singleton 2003). In Indonesia, rodents are the most important pre-harvest pests in economic terms, causing on average at least 15% annual losses of rice (Geddes 1992). In Africa, the numbers are similar. Damage due to rodents in Tanzania causes an estimated annual yield loss of 5-15% of maize (corn), corresponding to about $45 million, and food which could feed about 2 million people (Leirs 2003; Table 1). In parts of South America, native rodents cause crop damage varying between 5-90% of total production (Rodriquez 1993). Obviously, we need better pest control strategies than we have today. The design of rodent control strategies has both an ecological dimension, relating to the interaction of the pest population and its resources and enemies (Singleton et al. 1999a), and an economic dimension, relating to crop damage, which affects yield, and the use of pesticides, which in turn affects production costs (Carlson and 367