Maths skills ‘dropping alarmingly’
Schools that abolish streaming have a better chance of addressing children’s declining achievement in maths, a new report has found.
The Education Review Office (ERO) report, released yesterday, found children’s confidence and ability to do maths fell between years 4 and 8, a period in which achievement has been ‘‘dropping alarmingly for some time,’’ chief review officer Nicholas Pole said.
He said schools that bucked this ‘‘worrying trend’’ – apparent in other year levels and international studies – made a conscious effort to raise teachers’ capabilities and avoid streaming.
‘‘They refused to accept that so many children were simply not good at mathematics.’’
NZ Association of Maths Teachers president and University of Auckland lecturer Dr Gillian Frankcom said many teachers’ maths skills needed improvement but disagreed streaming was necessarily a problem.
‘‘They [streams] are flexible and they’re open to change – if they’re not, then teachers are not doing what they should be doing.’’
The ERO visited 40 schools where students’ maths skills had improved.
What made the difference was a dual focus on short-term interventions for struggling students and long-term professional support in maths teaching for staff, the report said.
It said streaming children into different classes for maths separated the subject from other areas of curriculum.
‘‘By abandoning this practice, teachers found they were able to more effectively integrate mathematics into authentic contexts.’’
Frankcom said she was unsure how prevalent ‘‘strict’’ maths streaming was in Kiwi primary schools.
It was not unusual for children to be grouped by ability in various subjects, although the success of streaming depended on whether it was ‘‘on the children’s plus side or a teacher’s,’’ she said.
Primary school teachers had to be proficient up to level 4 of the New Zealand curriculum, which meant understanding and teaching fractions, percentages and decimals.
She said teachers’ lack of maths confidence had concerning impacts on students heading into secondary school: ‘‘Only half [of children] know a half and a half is a whole in year 8.’’
Recent research from the Programme of International Student Assessment (PISA) has shown New Zealand is one of few countries where 15-year-olds’ maths abilities are in ‘‘accelerated decline’’.