Plans to overhaul primary maths are 'seriously flawed'

[dipsydoodle]

A campaign group promoting maths has attacked plans to overhaul maths teaching in primary schools in England as "undeliverable".

In a letter to the Education Secretary, Michael Gove, National Numeracy says the draft curriculum is "overloaded" and relies too much on rote learning.

The curriculum, due to come into force in 2014, expects children to know up to the 12-times table by the age of nine.

A government spokesman responded: "It is high time rigour is restored."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-19217813

With regard to "plans to overhaul" I hadn't realised that children aged nine wouldn't know up to 12-times anyway.

Whilst I recall being encouraged to learn 16-times table when I was six I'm blowed if I know what the reason was. What in the past was special about multiple units of 16 ?

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. You had an early computer programmer setting your curriculum, perhaps?

They though familiarity with 4-bit quantities would be useful? Maybe, more realistically, they thought conversion from pounds to ounces (or stones to pounds) would be good to be able to do quickly.

Up to 12 was what I had to learn; with decimal currency out, and feet and inches pretty much too, I think up to 10 (ie, up to 9, and then a good grounding in how Arabic numerals actually work) is adequate (it's not as if you need to multiply by 11 or 12 to do long multiplication).

[Downwinder]

2. Ounces to pounds?

[dipsydoodle]

4. I should have thought of that one myself

especially considering I still tend to use imperial as opposed to metric weight units. You may well be correct. I was 6 years old by 1950 and that's when it would have been. There were no thoughts of metrication at that time. It was my father who'd encouraged me to learn it - not the school.

[Downwinder]

5. Also sixteenths of an inch.

I sort of doubt he was influenced by the compass rose (16 points).

[LeftishBrit]

3. The 12 times table was useful when our money system was 12 pence to a shilling

and our main measurement system was 12 inches to a foot.

Nowadays, there seems to be little point in learning the tables beyond 10.

I don't think it was common to learn them beyond 12 even in the past; though the 16 times table might have been useful because of 16 ounces to a pound? In Robert Graves' 'Goodbye to All That', he mentions having, as a small child in the late 19th century, been found by his father 'crying over the difficulty of the 23-times table'. He was attending a small private school. I am not sure whether it was the same school, or a different one, where he was forced to do arithmetic to a metronome. (Don't tell Nick Gibb; we don't want to give him ideas!)

The trouble with most Education Ministers is that they suffer from the King Canute syndrome: they think that just by announcing that everyone ought to be able to do X by age Y, they can instantly make it so. The additional trouble with these particular Education Ministers, apart from their both being fools, is that they think education should be an exact replica of what they got in rather old-fashioned schools in the 60s and 70s. Also, they assume that the way to raise standards is to lower the age at which things are taught. Although this is one of the easiest things to measure, in fact international studies show that one of the least important factors in ultimate achievement is the age when teaching begins. For instance, hildren in countries with no formal education until 7 do at least as well ultimately as those who start at 4.

[dipsydoodle]

8. If you include two as a prime

Last edited Tue Aug 14, 2012, 11:11 AM - Edit history (1)

they only to learn parrot fashion 2,3,5,7 - that's if they're only going to 10 and not 12.

With regard "old-fashioned schools in the 60s and 70s" - I last interviewed prospective apprentices in 1981. Those best at maths usually won places - duffers would not have grasped AC theory. I was aware of the manner in which the maths syllabus had changed from what my own children were then learning at school and the way in which they were taught too. It was re-teaching them in the way I had been taught which improved their understanding and helped pass exams.

[Downwinder]

10. I read an article somewhere

that explained that the brain is not able to accept some concepts until it develops at a specific age.

[Downwinder]

6. Any coinage for 1/16 crown?

[dipsydoodle]

7. It was something to with either

mercantile / shipping use or engineering use.

A crown was 60 old pence so there is no round figure 1/16th. Keep this up and eventually we'll get to the atomic weight of oxygen.

[Downwinder]

9. I can't recall any base 16 in chemistry.

Furlongs are octal. Perhaps perches or rods.