Which top ten? Football, Table-Tennis, obesity? No, no, and thrice no – TIMSS!
TIMSS is the catchily-titled ‘Trends in International Maths and Science Study’. The study is a quadrennial analysis of maths and science skills in primary and secondary-age children (two groups – 10 and 14yrs).
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TIMSS placed English students 7th and 5th for 10 and 14 year-olds, respectively, in science, and 7th in maths at both age groups. More than 60 nations participated in the survey. This puts English kids, according to the BBC news site, ahead of many of our European competitors.
This improvement seems to have been at the expense of student enjoyment of the subject, as Schools minister Jim Knight noted. Whether this is because students are being tested more, or because they are actually being pushed to do well (and no child likes to be forced to study) is not within our means to say, but the results are surely encouraging in themselves.
The results also compare well with those for the 2007 Pisa survey of maths and reading, which rated the UK’s 15-year-olds ‘average’ in maths and reading, from a larger group of nations.
Less encouraging, sadly, are the TIMSS results for Scottish children. Scotland’s highest placing was 13th out of 49. There is clearly work to be done north of the border, and we’d hope our superb maths tutoring service might help scottish kids everywhere.
(Maths-Whizz is still appropriate for sassenachs, we might add).
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