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Poor Numeracy ’Blighting’ Millions Of Lives, National Numeracy Warns.
This raises three questions:
- Why is basic numeracy such a problem with compulsory education to the age of sixteen, in the UK?
- Perhaps, there is too much bureaucratic focus on national curriculum and not enough on the basics, namely reading, writing and arithmetic?
- Surely the teaching profession should be held accountable?
Related articles
- Numeracy Campaign: ‘maths curriculum failing to meet the needs of the 21st century’ (telegraph.co.uk)
- Mental Maths Tips for Numeracy Tests (cfmathssupport.wordpress.com)
- Telegraph numeracy campaign: Why maths is essential to business (telegraph.co.uk)
- Number of adults in England with poor numeracy rising (guardian.co.uk)
- Numeracy campaign: Education reform in the maths classroom (telegraph.co.uk)
The fault lies with the fact that the Uk’s state education system has been deliberately dumbed down to save money to the point where it has slipped from 1st place in the period of the early 1950′s to 47th place today.
Kenneth baker’s so called reforms, back in the 1980′s and the abolition of teachers’ negotiating rights meant that the quality of teaching diminished as blockheads who lacked the necessary numeracy and literacy skills themselves were unleashed on students.
Too many parents are lazy and feckless and in turn produce offspring who want instant gratification and demand that learning must be”fun”.
The idea that one must learn in order to become a useful and productive citizen has been replaced by the idea that everything can be reduced to “bite sized” chunks and that the rest of the world would stand by, whilst our youngsters free from academic rigour could sit GCSE’s deliberately dumbed down year by year to the point where a lobotomised armadillo could pass them at top grades whilst sleeping.
The UK diet of many C1′S, C2′s, D’s and E’s is vitamin D deficient, as evidenced by the amount of prozac and seroxat antidepressants prescribed for these pupils and their often feckless parents.
We now have a situation under which teachers are interviewed by pupils and where they get to “appraise” teachers.
Truly the animals in the zoo have been placed in charge.
Headteachers, some of whom are paid up to 130,000 GBP a year, preside over this sorry excuse for an education system which turns out students who are unable to read, write or count, representing 20 percent of 5 to 18 year olds. Add to this, the indiscipline, the placing of unruly pupils in detention so that ofsted inspectors only see well behaved students and are thus not aware of the extent of troublemaking, you have a recipe for national decline, criminality and the highest teenage pregnancy rates in Western Europe.
The situation requires more money and more than Michael Gove’s valiant efforts.
The following additional measures are needed:
1)Benchmark our state schools to best practice in Singapore and South Korea plus Hungarian mathematics teaching(the best in the world).
2)Put all teachers on flexi time and extend the school day until 7 pm at night plus saturday schools for slower learners.
3)Re introduce whole class teaching methods and academic rigour.
4)Sack incompetent heads and teachers,replace with teachers from foreign countries with a better record in maths teaching than ourselves, e.g, Hungary, Russia, Taiwan, Sweden.
5)Provide healthy schoolmeals as per Jamie Oliver’s recommendations
John, many thanks for an interesting and thought provoking response.
There is another aspect to the education debate.
Since the Second World War, education has been seen as to ticket to greater social mobility. Unfortunately, with falling quality standards in education and a government committed to austerity, jobs and growth are missing – this is questioning the value of investment in education – the matter is most acute for less privilged students who have to run up enormous personal debts.