Maths-Whizz Blog

Education News – Becta to close

May 24th, 2010

For those of our UK Whizzers living under a rock, we have a new coalition government.

The new government has pledged to reduce the UK’s deficit by £6bn in the short term, with further savings to follow. This amount is relatively trivial in relation to the size of the deficit, but seen by some as an important first step.

1.3% of that six billion will – according to today’s news – be Becta-shaped (page 3 in the PDF linked above). The Department for Children, Schools, and Families has already changed to the more Ronseal Department for Education.

We’re still figuring out exactly what the demise of Becta means for us at Whizz, but with the organisation’s (or ‘quango’s’) remit to increase awareness and uptake of educational technology in state schools, there may be some negative effects.

Despite this, its our users and our staff who do the most work to spread the word about Maths-Whizz, and so the appearance or disappearance of government-funded bodies we hope will not affect our fortunes too greatly…


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Government re-emphasises personal tuition for lagging students

June 30th, 2009

Education Secretary Ed Balls today re-iterated the government’s commitment to personal tuition for students falling behind in literacy and numeracy, reported today by the BBC.

The £315m already allocated to the scheme would be disbursed amongst the local education authorities. Parents who felt their children were falling through the cracks, and not getting the needed additional help, would be able to appeal via the courts.

As the BBC reports, this system will build on the ‘making good progress’ pilots, which to date have involved:

…short, sharp bursts of intensive one-to-one tuition on top of normal schooling. Typically children have been signed up for 10 hours of personal tuition.

Classes could run either during or outside school hours, a DCSF spokeswoman said.

It would be immodest to suggest that Maths-Whizz is THE ANSWER TO ED BALLS’ PRAYERS, but it’s incumbent on us to point out that, with our online Tutoring Plus service Balls, Brown, et. al. might get a lot more bang for their buck, and achieve much the same improvement in struggling student maths scores, as if they employed breathing human tutors.

The terms of the tutoring boost sessions described above, including the fact that children would be able to learn in-school or out-, are a good fit with the Maths-Whizz method – which allows students to log on anywhere, anytime, for quick sessions on the maths tutor.

We hope Balls is listening…


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Primary Maths Still Below Par

May 8th, 2009

A UK Parliamentary report paints a damning picture of the state of primary school leavers’ maths, as reported in The Guardian yesterday.

The report’s chair, Edward Leigh, said:

It is disgraceful that over one fifth of all primary school children reach the end of their primary education without a secure grasp of basic mathematical skills.
This can have serious long-term consequences: for many then continue through secondary school without acquiring basic numeracy skills, impairing their chances in life and leaving them later in need of expensive remedial education.

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No more parents’ evenings?

May 9th, 2008

The parents’ evening is going out of fashion, according to an article in The Guardian, yesterday.

Polly Curtis reports:

Rather than an evening a term queueing for a five-minute chat with teachers, parents want more frequent access, or to monitor their children’s progress online, according to research commissioned by the Department for Children, Schools and Families.

The DCSF report, summarised here, suggests that parents’ working lives are getting in the way of engagement with their students’ education, especially homework.

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