Times tables tests should be scrapped and grammar exams “stripped back”, teaching unions are urging the Government.
Ministers are being urged to cut down the number of tests in primary schools, which unions say lead to high levels of anxiety in children.
Tests on times tables are compulsory for all Year Four pupils at state schools in England.
That long march through the institutions hit teacher training some time back. The teachers don;t know this stuff so how can they be judged on how well the kids learn it?
Year Four? What’s that in real money? I remember us getting a gold star on a chart as we progressed through times tables in, I think, 3rd year at Junior School.
Another brick in the wall…
Teacher training was one of the earliest institution to fall after librarians and academic lecturers. This all happened in the 1960s and 70s.
I was there, I saw the results happen in front of my eyes as the grammar school teachers at Bash Street Tooting retired and the earnest bearded Marxists took over.
Well of course. An inability to add up is an essential prerequisite for socialism. How can you continue the march to paradise if the kids can add up better than Diane Abbot?
the earnest bearded Marxists
and the males were even worse.
In the U.S. we’ve seen similar efforts to get rid of “high stakes ” testing including claims that the kiddies are throwing up & having sleepless nights, etc. Funny thing about that, in most cases the “high stakes” are only for the schools & their admin, why would the kiddies be so anxious? Turns out that the schools are doing their level best to make them so – “hey parents look how distressed your kids are, don’t you want to get rid of these tests?” Not yet – well let’s turn up the heat on the little buggers a bit more.
Kids aged 9 or 10 are quite competitive, so most of them would enjoy tests.
Or at. least, that’s my experience with my lot, who loved spelling bees and mental arithmetic.
To be left wing requires ignorance therefore the goal of state education is the creation of informant morons, and how they have succeeded!!
“Ministers are being urged to cut down the number of tests in primary schools, which unions say lead to high levels of anxiety in children.”
This only happens because teachers put pressure on the kids because the tests are also to tell if the school is doing a good job or not. At that age, they shouldn’t do anything but just hand a test out one day.
Back in the 80s I spent some time hanging around with a teacher.* Socialist of course. She was a Labour councillor in a Labour borough (Not he one she lived in, again, of course). Taught years 1-4 (? to me that’d be infants) mainly. But qualified for up to eleven. Functionally, she was innumerate. Couldn’t add two, two digit numbers together & get the same result in consecutive attempts. I think she could just about manage X5 out of the multiplication tables. Product of a teacher training college.
*A strong resemblance to Cher & passion for hot kinky sex with either sex or both together were the key inducements. Maybe that’s what they learned at teacher training? On the syllabus?
An eighteen year-old who was sitting A-levels told me a few months ago that the teacher of one of his subjects predicted that the class was unlikely to get decent grades.
Surely one might reasonably expect some of the group to do well and other to do poorly the
studentpupil said. But if we all do badly then the teacher must be crap.Unarguable. Let’s abolish exams.
I was forced to endure times tables by rote in the primary school – aged 8 to 11.
It was a waste of time. I was so terrified at having to stand before the class and recite this stuff, that I flunked at 2x and they gave up. It wasn’t for another decade or so that I really learned maths when I was working behind a bar to pay my way through college, and my father taught me trigonometry when he was explaining how he built roofs. Rote learning only works on a particular type of learner. Those of us who think and learn differently will be salted ground for this method. So, in part, I agree with dropping it providing a more intelligent approach is used. Ah, yeah, I see the problem here…
Mr Dickinson, the saintly maths master at Slough Grammar School for Boys back in the seventies, used to insist that we also memorised the 13-times table. He didn’t see why we should arbitrarily stop at 12-times. I sometimes think that mine was the last generation of state-school pupils to be trusted with even a sniff of genuine education.
Personally I would extend the learning-by-rote thing to memorising divisional tables too. That way, when you grow up and see a horse priced at 7/4, you immediately think, four elevenths, that’s a 36.36% chance, and can decide whether to invest accordingly. A proper, practical skill.
13 times? At Grammar School? We did 14 times and 16 times at Primary School. I suppose the point concerned ounces, pounds and stones.
It might help when you wanted to know how many stones in a hundredweight: you could do it instantly by recognition.
Strangely we never did any arithmetic involving grains, or troy ounces, or the other odd units alluded to on the back cover of our jotters. No doubt we used rods , poles, and perches but I have no idea now as to what they were. Related to cricket wickets, perhaps?
Re cricket, the relevant measure is a chain. And an acre is a furlong times a chain
@Longrider – September 1, 2024 at 12:17 pm
I was forced to endure times tables by rote in the primary school – aged 8 to 11.
I wasn’t, because it was assumed that we already knew them up to 12x – which we did at (UK state) infant school, ages 4 to 7. Picked up a few more at (state) Grammar School – 16 eventually turned out to be useful when hexadecimal became the norm in computing.
Yes, 8 and 16 are useful for computing, and 1.6 a useful approximation for miles to kilometres
@ Paul, Somerset
I taught myself the 13 times table at the age of 5 or 6; a bit later I taught myself the 14, 15. 16 and 17x – I reckoned the 18x was just part of the 9x; the lower tables are more useful than 13x but at 5 or 6 I was just discovering that I had an aptitude for maths.
It took me a couple of years (I was at least 7) to realise that people who lack an aptitude for maths aren’t stupid – they just can’t do maths like I can’t sing in tune.
@ Longrider
You have my sympathy but facility with the lower tables is a useful dskill for those who do not want to be cheated by incompetent shop assistants (yes, incompetent rather than malicious: I think I have commented on undercharging as often as I have on overcharging(
@john77 Indeed. However, I didn’t learn them by rote. I learned by using them in practice when serving pints. Many, many years later, it was pointed out to me that my interest in maps suggested a mathematical mind. I can do maths. I cannot learn by rote. The person pointing this out was commenting on the paucity of talent in the teaching profession.
Apparently teachers object to someone finding out whether their pupils aged 9 can do *some* of the stuff that I could do at 5!
No, I do not have an IQ of 400 or the brain the size of a planet like Marvin.
Of course some will fail – some guys/gals have a blankwhen it come to maths – but 90% should be able to do this by the age of 7. If they cannot teach the 90% then they deserve to be shown u and criticised
@ Longrider
Thank you for the clarification.
Again it’s clear that I was lucky: I must have had a good teacher (although since the younger of my sisters taught me to read when I was four it is possible that she also taught me elementary arithmetic)
@john77
How’s it an aptitude in maths? It has nothing to do with maths. It’s an aptitude in memory. I know every solution to 100-n = to 99. Which can be very useful. And can work in base 12/2² (s.d stock market prices). It’s not math, it’s memory. So I can total a supermarket till role faster than the girl can type the numbers in. I already know all the possible additions. I don’t have to calculate them. It’s like the times table. One remembers the products. In both directions, if you’re any good.
It’s like doing bar work without a calculating till. You just remember all the prices & the combinations. You don’t have to think about it. That’s what they don’t teach kids now. Memory. And you can only develop that through practise.
Odd thing is, I can do it with numbers. But I couldn’t memorise a poem to save my life. On the other hand, never wanted to.
VAT on private schools likely to cost 1.8 billion instead of raising 4 billion, according to the ASI.
Because parents moving their kids to the state get a windfall, more disposable income.
So some will choose more leisure and less work, so pay less tax.
Unintended consequences. Who could have predicted it?
Incidentally, I never understood the point of the tables past 9x. You just break the number down into two or more numbers less than10 & add the products.
I wonder if the Classics teachers at public schools will set up a Limited Company “Classics Teachers of Starmer’s England Limited” and then sell their teaching services to Eton, Manchester Grammar, Ampleforth etc after which those schools hiring their labour can reclaim the VAT. They might have to offer to sell services to State and Academy schools but there would not be many takers. If I’ve understood right of course,
Like all forms of memorisation you have to start small. So, just to start you off.
Parsley
is gharsley
Ogden Nash.
I’ve read the report, obvs, and think it a “brave” prediction. One that’s entirely possible but….possibly more in the relam of “Oi! think about this” than anything else.
On public schools and VAT …
I was chatting in the pub with a neighbour who works at one and she was saying this year VAT isn’t too much of a problem because it’s only 2 terms worth so they’re mostly absorbing it.
She also said that at most they reckon they’ll only be able to claim 4% VAT rebates from purchases.
Their biggest headache is that they now have to pay business rates and that is punching the biggest hole in their budgets.
Her school is a special case because 60% of pupils have learning difficulties but don’t have statements, soufflé they end up back in the state system they are going to cost the schools where they end up a lot of money.
Bongo is on the right path, some of this will be mitigated by the free(ish) market rewiring so expect future bans on home schooling and group schooling.
@ bis
Well. some mental arithmetic including learning by rote the 4 times table may just be memorisation but teaching myself the 13x table obviously was not.
Please think before your next criticism
It’s hard to understand why you bothered, if you’d already got the 3 times table off pat. But I s’pose a lot of mathematicians are linear thinkers.
Talking of Ampleforth
Christopher Hope: Curing vegetarianism the Ampleforth way
@bis
Imo you are wrong
Starmer: I’m releasing these prisoners in the interest of public safety
Starmer talking about his crackdown on “inflammatory content” on social media
https://x.com/notfarleftatall/status/1829462605401915467
😉