Today’s post comes courtesy of Lorna Tyrtania, ThirdForce UK Senior Product Manager
I’ve just been reading the Carol Vorderman report “A World Class Mathematics Education for All our Young People” it’s a refreshing report written in a highly pragmatic style and there are some really strong recommendations that I hope the Government will implement in the future.
There are some really eye opening statistics and key findings that I’ll share:
- British 15 year olds are now more than two whole academic years behind 15 year olds in Shanghai (China).
- One in four economically active adults are functionally innumerate.
- Recent research suggests that 22% of 16-19 year olds are functionally innumerate, this figure has remained stable for the last 20 years and is higher than many other industrialised countries.
- One finding which I found especially powerful was the critical importance of Primary School Teachers. Research has shown that by the age of 11 a child’s mathematical career is effectively decided. 90% who fail to reach the SAT target in the Key Stage 2 National Test will go on to fail GCSE maths. It really is a case of ‘give me the child until he is eleven and I will give you the mathematician’.
- Only 15% of students take maths beyond GCSE
- Nearly half of all students ‘fail’ GCSE (<C Grade), Vorderman helpfully enables us to visualise quite how many young people this equates to by telling us that if they all held hands they’d span the entire length of the M1 from London to Leeds- each year!
- There is an extreme variability in people’s aptitude for, and attainment in, mathematics; it has been estimated that among 16 year olds, the range of mathematical development covers ten years even without the upper and lower 20% tails; it is still about six years.
So I think the report is right to highlight that the current Maths GCSE isn’t fit for purpose and is in need of reviewing – especially when it needs to span a whole range of mathematical skills. But I think Carol Vorderman and her team have missed a golden opportunity to embrace Functional Maths as part of their strategy for GCSE. There wasn’t even a mention of Functional Skills qualifications and the role it plays! Instead of a twin GCSE, why not simply revert to the original ethos of Functional Skills and reinstate them as a ‘hurdle’ to being able to achieve anything above a C grade at GCSE or why not call the new GCSE twin Functional Maths and run with a qualification that has already had three years of piloting and is seeing learners pass a well rounded syllabus that produces functional, numerate young people who can go on to provide the skills a UK PLC needs or that equips the learners with the skills to reap the benefits of FE.
If Carol was still hosting Countdown, I’d give her the Countdown Conundrum FINALS COUNT SKILL and leave her to work out the solution to the Maths crisis in FUNCTIONAL SKILLS!
Am I a lone voice?
I’m with you 100% on the need to make Functional Skills (maths AND English) a core part of the curriculum and having this a hurdle to GCSE is very sensible. Evidence also shows that students who are functional, do much better in full GCSE anyway – what have we got to loose?
Jonathan Wells, Guroo
Glad to hear that you’re right with us Jonathan and I know we both believe in the multitude of benefits that embracing Functional Skills can bring. I totally agree there is nothing to lose and improved literacy and numeracy skills to gain!
I think this makes the case for FS at Secondary level and at FE where many come complete with GCSE at D and C but without the skills to problem solve at a very basic level.
The point is that this report is essentially written by mathematicians – and in practice they want as much pure mathematics as possible and not functional skills unfortunately. While much is sensible, mathematicians always argue their subject is different and that comes out clearly in the report. However, the subject has been allowed to be different in many ways in the past (remember 4 tiers in GCSE and two in all other subjects? and allocation of only bits of the subject to individual tiers? – never allowed in other subjects!). That hasnt helped improve standards though.
However, making functional skills a hurdle to GCSE Grade C would never work – it proved totally unreliable when modelled. How would you explain to a parent that their bright child had been demoted from Grade A to grade D in GCSE Maths because of a poor test result in FS.
Surely what we need is a rigorous GCSE with sufficient functionality in it to ensure that candidates can carry out basic, practical maths in their everyday lives, including work situations.
Seems to me that being Functional in Maths is the appropriate precursor to being given the opportunity to develop into a ‘bright’ maths student. Surely all of the building blocks need to be sound before higher levels of attainment can be built upon them? I think employers have suffered enough from A and A* Maths candidates who can’t perform simple maths tasks in the workplace. Employers need a qualification that will accurately inform them of a potential employee’s maths ability or indicate a skills gap that will require some investment. I’m not totally sold on the ‘hurdle’ idea purely because it makes FS sounds like a burden rather than a benefit, but I think in someway the notion that Functional Maths is important before Higher Maths skills can be developed needs to be set in place.
I have experience of children from 9 to 18 who difficulty with basic adding and subtracting. I also have experience with primary teachers who can’t spell, have no idea about Maths and as for ICT have no idea about anything but Power Point, which they teach for three years and bore the children to death (this is about a 6 hour couse for basics).
Every child who we have helped initially said, “Iam no good at Math!” Or “I hate Maths!” Within a very short spell with us, they can’t wait for the lessons to begin and in many cases make fantastic progress. The reason, we teach them how to understand the Maths they are trying to do. As I understand, school wants every pupil to leave with 5 GCSE’S. If a child goes on a plumbing course that offers 1/2 a GCSE and a mechanics course that offers 1/2 a GCSE the school gains another whole GCSE. Therefore the easy way is to send children who are not Maths orientated, or struggling in school on two or more of these courses. The last consideration is the childs future and the first consideration is the schools stats..This has been confirmed by many sources and disgusts me..My own child is an A Student in Maths, but the teacher refused to teach him A* questions because he wanted him to concentrate on getting an A…Again the school policy. So we taught my son the A* questions because we don’t believe in limiting ability, do you?
Sounds like a very unfortunate school policy Dave and well done to you for helping your son access questions covering the whole ability range. At MindLeaders ThirdForce we’re all about changing lives through learning, so we’d never seek to limit learning opportunities. We work to help equip all learners with the basic skills they need to suceed in life and to facilitate their learning journeys, whatever stage they are at. We never stop learning so why should anyone else?