Cyclical maths
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30 / 09 / 2009 | Author: dnorris
Cyclical Maths
The Plowden Report – children and their primary schools, was published in 1967. It was a large scale report on British Primary Schools and it insisted that knowledge does not fall into neatly separated compartments and that work and play are not opposites, but complementary.
It drew on the way toddlers learn through play and it developed this theme, proclaiming that individual discovery, first hand experience and an opportunity for creative work lay at the heart of a good education.
It didn’t quite turn out that way.
The accusation is that schools today are forced to deal with league tables. They are given curriculums and told to teach it to the letter, with little or no creative input – except for mountains of administrative paperwork and a disproportionate consideration for school safety. As a result some say that schools have turned into factories competing to see who can turn out the best product every year and letting down those who don’t or can’t conform to these standards.
But teaching is a cyclical business. Reports come and go. Teaching fads do the same and lo and behold after 40 years a major independent review of maths in primary schools has come up with the recommendations that are proclaimed as being innovative but which actually replicate many of the recommendations already languishing in the 1967 Plowden Report.
The William’s Report on Maths in primary schools calls for an urgent shift to reverse the ‘can’t do attitude’ to maths. He wants every pupil to leave primary school without a fear of maths.
The most obvious throwback to the Plowden Report is a recommendation that – “from an early age, learning about numbers and shapes should be rooted in play.” He says children should do more ‘mental maths’ in the classroom and urges parents to help their children through games puzzles and activities like cooking at home.
The key recommendations are that at least 1000 maths specialists should be trained every year over the next ten years so that there is one in every primary school. This person should be a ‘maths champion’ and have ‘a deep mathematical and pedagogical knowledge.’ The maths champion should be offered an incentive to train and be offered a one off completion payment of £8000. There is also to be provision for specialists in maths to be fast tracked in the training programme. All of this is to commence before the end of the year 2009.
But how can it? Schools need to tool up as they say in engineering plants. They need new maths schemes. They will need new toys and games to allow them to pursue their natural interest in numeracy, problem solving, reasoning, shape and measuring especially if its emphasis is on play and above all fun. These in turn need to be manufactured.
And of course there still remains the bogy man of testing.
There is one tell tale paragraph that states;- There remains a core of pupils who fail to achieve level 3 in mathematics by the time they leave the primary sector at the age of 11. Effective early intervention at an early age could break this trend.
But it is the existence of the tests which determine whether they attain levels one two three and four which have been at the root of the unimaginative approach to maths in recent years and yet there is no mention of doing away with those maligned tests.
As things stand there is scope for ample use of new techniques like video usage but school budgets are what determine whither they are used, not training. Similarly, as things stand there is a requirement to spend time on mental arithmetic away from using calculators. Sir Peter Williams recommends greater inclusion of the cultural and historical story of science and maths to generate interest. Those with very very long memories going back to before the implementation of a national curriculum will remember that teaching was deemed to be a local provision nationally delivered. In other words local culture and local heroes were used to embellish the learning.
Seeping into the report is the acceptance that quality teaching and how well children learn are inseparable. You don’t need a report to tell you this. All school children know who the best teacher in the school is. Putting the magic ingredient of what exactly makes them the best teacher will always be a mystery. It could even be a word that is often denied;-namely charisma.
The report has been accepted and the Education secretary Ed Balls is now working on implementing it. It just goes to show how cyclical educational trends are.
