School ditches ‘intimidating’ maths textbooks to quell nerves

MATHS textbooks should be banned because they intimidate pupils, a leading girls’ school headmistress has said.

Jane Prescott, head of Portsmouth High School, said students risked becoming anxious if they could see their classmates “galloping ahead” of them.

Removing the textbooks had been a “confidence booster” for girls, and allowed them to “feel encouraged, and feel they are good at maths”, Ms Prescott said.

“Maths is about confidence. If you are someone who is nervous about maths, [textbooks] put you off,” she told The Daily Telegraph.

‘Maths is about confidence. If you are someone who is nervous about maths, textbooks put you off ’

The ban has been in place during maths lessons at the £14,000-a-year girls’ school for the past three years, and applies to all age groups except for those in the sixth form.

“If everyone is going through a text book, it can be intimidating, you can feel restricted and feel held back,” Ms Prescott said. She said the textbook ban, which was implemented at the suggestion of the head of maths, would benefit other schools.

“Our maths results are fantastic, and the vast majority [of pupils] say that maths is one of their favourite subjects,” she said.

Portsmouth High School, which opened in 1882, is part of the Girls’ Day School Trust. Its alumnae include Meg Hillier, the Labour MP, and Margaret Rock, one of few female mathematicians at Bletchley Park who helped to decode the Enigma machine.

Instead of using textbooks in classes, teachers write questions on the board that cater to different abilities, and homework questions are accessed online.

Another benefit is that teachers can slip in harder exercises, which would not ordinarily feature in a textbook for that age group. The more able students can challenge themselves by attempting tougher questions without being put off by the knowledge that the questions are aimed at an older age group.

“If you are able at maths, you can just keep going. You could find someone in Year Seven doing questions for Lower Sixth,” Ms Prescott said.

“The earlier the children are exposed to something complex, the easier they will find it later.”

Other schools have taken steps to ensure that pupils’ self-esteem is not dented by the classroom environment.

Earlier this year, Putney High School in south-west London banned teachers from writing negative comments on pupils’ end-of-year exams.

The £19,000-a-year school had already stopped grading pieces of work for pupils aged 11 to 14 in order to prevent girls getting overly “fixated” on their mark. The school then axed comments in favour of symbols, allowing girls to work out themselves where they have gone wrong.

Last year, Gary Schlick, headmaster of Bedminster Down School in Bristol, banned teachers from marking, as it “risks damaging children’s confidence”.

He said issuing pupils with grades, scores and comments on their work may come across as negative, and does little to encourage children to improve.