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Kerre McIvor: Critical maths - our kids are the collateral damage after years of teaching decline
6 Feb, 2021 04:00 PM
5 minutes to read
Teachers stream students into ability-based groups far more than their global counterparts do, meaning children with potential miss out.
Teachers stream students into ability-based groups far more than their global counterparts do, meaning children with potential miss out.
OPINION:
For as long as I ve been doing talkback radio, which is more than 20 years now, parents and grandparents have known something doesn t add up in the way we teach our kids maths. I couldn t count the number of phone calls I ve fielded from frustrated parents trying to help confused and despondent kids get their heads around their maths homework (and it s not because I didn t learn addition in my years at school that I can t count the calls).
The Ministry of Education has enlisted a team of experts to tackle New Zealand children s poor performance in maths.
The ministry says it will make the maths curriculum clearer and give teachers more help (File image).
Photo: 123RF
It has commissioned the country s top science body, the Royal Society, to investigate the maths curriculum and the best ways of teaching the subject.
The ministry said it would also make the maths curriculum clearer and give teachers more help to teach it.
It announced the moves after the Principals Federation said there appeared to be no leadership, despite years of falling national and international test scores in maths and science.
Photo: 123RF
The Principals Federation says achievement in maths and science in particular should be ringing alarm bells and schools need more direction on what they should be teaching and the best ways to teach it.
In a letter to the secretary for education, Iona Holsted, the federation s president, Perry Rush, said New Zealand s falling scores had not provoked an urgent response and the lack of thought leadership was a serious weakness.
Holsted responded with a letter that said the Ministry of Education (MOE) was already working on the problems the federation raised and schools already had the ability, and the funding for teacher training, to change how they taught.