I’ve already twittered about this, but just a reminder that the much-discussed Channel 4 Dispatches programme The Kids Don’t Count has a minisite with a nice maths quiz.
Catch the twitterati talking about it with the #Dispatches hashtag, or try the test for yourself and see if you score 14/14.
As revealed in the Dispatches programme, only ONE of the 150 primary teachers who took a test like this got every question right. Which makes you wonder if they shouldn’t be taking a little primary maths tutoring before they take a class of future engineers, scientists and accountants.
Much fuss has been made of this, and the apparently parlous state our primary teaching is in. The GoW is inclined to be a little more generous, but only a little, because as he’s stated in the past, a love (if not innate aptitude) for the subject should come first, and an emphasis on testing second.
We’ll probably heap opprobium on the teachers, when we should be focussing on policy which chases test results, trains for pedagogy, and produces a blind willingness to cleave to a national curriculum which sometimes drains all the interest out of a subject.