A selection of cuttings
 
 

BBC Online: Are our children really this bright? December 2001

English and Maths targets in jeopardy. (The Independent, Saturday 10 October 1998)
 
 

Targets set by ministers for higher literacy and numeracy standards are in jeopardy, experts warned yesterday, as improvements faltered in tests for pupils aged 7, 11 and 14.

Maths results are worse than last year among children of 11 and 14. Those for science are also down at 14. In both Maths and English, the results for seven-year-olds remain largely unchanged.

Ministers, who have set targets to bring 75 per cent of 11-year-olds up to the expected level in Maths and 80 percent in English by 2002, say that they are still on track and that new mental arithmetic tests are responsible for the drop in Maths. However, an improvement of 4 percentage points a year is now required.

This year, the percentage reaching the expected level in Maths at 11 fell from 62 to 59 and rose in English by just 2 points to 65 per cent.

David Blunkett, the Secretary for State for Education, claims that mental arithmetic has been neglected in school and that it may take time for pupils to acquire a skill which needs to be perfected by constant practice.

Until recently, experts have been divided on the best way to teach Maths. During the Sixties and Seventies, rote learning of times-tables and mental arithmetic declined while teachers tried to instil mathematical concepts through practical activities and to introduce new topics in primary schools such as geometry.

In international comparisons, British pupils have lagged behind their peers for at least three decades. Earlier this year, a report from the Government's Numeracy Task Force, let by Professor David Reynolds of Newcastle University, united both conservatives and progressives behind a new strategy to improve Maths standards, including a daily numeracy hour.

The group backed more whole-class "interactive" teaching, in which all pupils are engaged in question-and-answer sessions, based on successful methods in countries such as Switzerland, Hungary and Taiwan. It also recommended more emphasis on number work and mental arithmetic.

Professor Ted Wragg, of Exeter University's school of education, said yesterday that the tailing off of improvements was exactly what he would have expected.

The targets are highly ambitious and if the Government reaches them we shall need to ask some searching questions, such as have the tests been made easier and have the gains been achieved at the expense of the least and the most able," he said.

This year's results were not unexpected, he said, because level four - the expected standard of 11 - had been set on the basis of what a typical 11-year-old should be able to do. "You would not expect more than two-thirds to be average. Compared with previous generations, the Government is wanting three-quarters or more of children to be average."

Professor Alan Smithers of Liverpool University said: "The Government has more of a political problem than an educational problem. It is going to be difficult to get the numbers to come out in their favour."

Mr Blunkett said that investment in a new literacy hour to be introduced into primary schools this autumn and a new numeracy hour next autumn would raise standards.

Chris Woodhead, the chief inspector of schools, insisted yesterday that the targets would "definitely" be met. "We have the national numeracy strategy coming on stream next year, and a £60m investment. Every teacher in the country will be trained in the methods of teaching basic arithmetic that we know from inspection evidence work."

Professor Reynolds said: "There is evidence from the national numeracy and literacy project evaluation of standards increasing very rapidly." Some literacy projects in the US Had produced improvements on an "awesome" scale, he said.

At 14, the percentage of pupils reaching the expected level in Maths was down from 60 to 59 per cent and in science from 60 to 56 per cent. For English, the figure rose from 57 to 65 per cent.

Last night, English teachers were sceptical about the results. The National Association for the Teaching of English said that it had received dozens of complaints from teachers saying that pupils had received up to two grades higher than they deserved.

Sorry, kids: in the calculator age, sums still matter, The Independent, 17 January 1998
 
 

Proposals to raise standards in maths with a new emphasis on mental arithmetic and more, better whole-class teaching, will be proposed by the Government's Numeracy Task Force next week. But the report is not a blueprint for a return to traditional teaching methods, says Judith Judd, Education Editor.
 
 

British children are lagging behind their counterparts elsewhere because schools' expectations of them are too low, the report says. Children should be expected to do most mathematical calculations in their heads, rather than using pencil and paper, until they are seven or eight.
 
 

The task force, led by Professor David Reynolds on Newcastle University, will give a strong endorsement to methods being trialled by the National Numeracy Project, in which ten minutes are spent at the beginning of each maths lesson on mental calculation. David Blunkett, the Secretary of State for Education, commissioned the enquiry to help fulfil his promise that 75 per cent of 11 year olds will be at the expected level of maths by the year 2002. The present figure is 62 per cent.
 
 

A new study into the teaching of number in primary schools has been published today by the Office for Standards in Education.

The report, The Teaching of Number in Three Inner-urban LEAs, looks at the quality of teaching and pupils' achievement in the three metropolitan boroughs of Greenwich and Newham in London and Knowsley in Merseyside.

The report commens the excellent teaching found in some schools, but calls for urgent attention to be given to the fact that variation in the quality of teaching and, therefore, the achievement of pupils across each authority are unacceptably wide.

In one school, only four per cent of Year 2 children (aged six to seven) could write down a two-digit number expressed in words. In another school 93 per cent did this correctly.
 
 

The Government's expectations of children in mathematics may be too low, Chris Woodhead, Chief Inspector of Schools, said yesterday as he disclosed wide variation in standards.
 
 

A report launched by Mr Woodhead found too little attention being given to mental arithmetic and learning tables. In one school, only one seven-year-old per class could write down a two digit number expressed in words, while in another almost all could.
 
 

The Office for Standards in Education said in its report that Britain's poor showing in international comparisons suggested that even schools scoring close to the national average must have low standards. Mr Woodhead said primary schools had to aim above the present national targets if sufficient improvement were to be made.
 
 

He urged the Government's new qualifications agency to keep the standard of national tests under review. "If we are not expecting enough in the tests, then clearly we are not stretching children enough and aren't going to make up the gap with our international competitors." England and Scotland were in the bottom third of the 42 countries taking part in the latest international survey of mathematics.
 
 

Inspectors have criticised maths teaching in inner cities - some schools are not even teaching times-tables. They say educating deprived children is no excuse for low standards and warn that big variations in teaching quality must be addressed if Britain is to catch up with competing countries.
 
 

Traditionalists who hope to use an academic's research to force a return to the teaching methods of the 1950s are wrong. Professor David Reynolds, author of the research showing the benefits of whole-class maths teaching, said yesterday he did not want to see a return to the past. His comments came as the Chief Inspector of schools, Chris Woodhead [said] that schools should turn their backs on modern lessons based on group work.
 
 

It is difficult to switch on the television (or to open a newspaper) without encountering yet another survey reporting how dismally the English perform at mathematics. Are we really that bad? And if so, is the way forward to be more like the Swiss, the Germans or the Taiwanese?
 
 

From the furore over claims this week by Chris Woodhead, the Chief Inspector of Schools, that British children are years behind their foreign counterparts in maths, would you have guessed, for example, that English 13 year-olds were the only ones to beat Korea in 1988 (in logic and problem solving)? Or that the lowest 10 per cent of 13 year-olds in Taiwan had an average mathematics score below that of the lowest 10 per cent in England in 1992? Or that we usually come between fifth and tenth out of more than 40 countries in international maths olympiads?
 
 

There are relatively few international surveys that have produced reliable information on mathematics performance, in the sense that they have taken care over the design of their tests and have a randomly selected sample representative of the national population.
 
 

Teachers must scrap progressive child-centred teaching methods in primary schools which have left young people lagging behind students in other countries in mathematics and literacy, Chris Woodhead, HM Chief Inspector, will announce today...
 
 

David Reynolds, of Newcastle university, who carried out the Ofsted survey, found maths in England was relatively poor, but with some strength in data handling and statistics. "English educationalists now need to look beyond their own geographical boundaries to see why it is that other countries may be doing better than we do." ...
 
 

In tonight's programme, Colin Richards, a former senior advisor at Ofsted, who has recently accused Mr Woodhead of manipulating data to paint a blacker picture of schools, criticises his "narrow, utilitarian view of what primary education is all about", and says too much prescription about teaching methods will turn schools into dull, arid places.
 
 

Mr Richards disputes the validity of international comparisons: "It is invalid to assume you can take any one particular factor from another culture and transplant it more or less intact."
 
 

Methods used to teach maths to children in Taiwan and Switzerland - and in classrooms throughout Britain for much of the century - are to be formally endorsed by Gillina Shephard, the Education and Employment Secretary, later this week.
 
 

At a visit to Thomas Arnold school in Dagenham, east London, she will see the unusual sight of primary school teachers teaching from the front of the classrooms in which all the desks point in the same direction.
 
 

They will be using an officially-produced textbook that leads pupils through the basics in logical steps, backed up by plenty of exercises to ensure that the principles have been grasped. The Dagenham teachers also place a big emphasis on mental arithmetic.
 
 

Although the aproach may remind Mrs Shephard of her own school days, she will know that educational researchers have only recently re-discovered it after scouring the world to find what works best.
 
 

Their starting point was the fact that in identical maths tests English pupils lagged two years behind their peers in other European and Pacific Rim countries.
 
 

Furthermore, their performance has declined since the late Sixties when the Plowden report on primary education led to the widespread adoption of so-called "child-centred" methods.
 
 

The declaration last week by David Blunkett, Labour's education spokesman, that schools should go back to basics is just the latest blow for what is loosely called "progressive education". The "trendies", so often excoriated by Tory politicians, have been in steady retreat for at least 20 years and it is also that long since any prominent Labour politician attempted seriously to defend them ...
 
 

The arguments over progressive education (which are, in practice, chiefly about primary education) are not likely to be settled by a few politicians' speeches They go back more than two centuries. On the surface, they are about the way we organise our schools and the way teachers organise their lessons. The progressive primary schools that developed in the 1960s threw out mental arithmetic, spelling tests, exercise books and old fashioned desks. Instead of teachers telling them what to do, children embarked on "discover learning" - finding out things for themselves. Instead of being taught as whole classes, sitting at rows of desks facing the front, they worked in small groups at tables, with the teacher circulating between them. Instead of being streamed by ability, children were placed in classes where dunces rubbed shoulders with the brightest.
 
 

David Blunkett must have felt relieved yesterday when his call for a return to traditional teaching methods in primary schools was received with polite restraint by head teachers. Three years ago, when John Pattern, then Secretary of State for Education, delivered a similar message he was booed...
 
 

The teacher trainers, accused by Mr Blunkett of turning out recruits who cannot teach the basics or control a class, will argue that problems in primary schools have more to do with underfunding and a surfeit of government initiatives than with sub-standard training or an attachment to 1960s ideology.
 
 

There is also an element in the teaching profession which will remain deeply sceptical. Many teachers still believe that education is about exploration and dicovery rather than about cramming facts into heads.