Setting for Maths in Year 7

Cakes,

Since Grade 4s were awarded for the first time in summer 2017 (as I presume you know), that is perhaps a little difficult to answer.

Do you mean 'C and above in the old GCSE or level 4 in the new one?' As far as I recall, both were / are norm-referenced exams and so the % passing is set by government, not according to what the students know or can use.

Clavinova,

But you prove the point. It is possible for a child with 8/20=40% to pass because mediocre maths must be balanced by high scores in science, humanities, oral and written Language, plus MFL. Not an easy mix. Here 35% fail English and Maths GCSE, Ebacc pass rate is 21%.
It is not possible to pass Brevet if the teacher rates class performance as 'insufficient' and exam scores are below 50%. That's where 10% fail rate comes from.

All students are taught and sit the exam with functions, quadratic equations, geometry and complex problem solving. Those who pass do achieve rounded mastery of maths at the suitable level.

And look, I found the quadratic equations!
The Beautician (Services specification) in Bac Pro, sits a maths and science exam with ...trigonometry, differentiation, quadratic equations, statistics and optimising shelf space and credit annuities - photo

Noble's point about people never needing trig, apparently even a beautician can use that to estimate building extension for her private practice.

To your point about hairdressers, maybe this perception is the problem. It is a good thing that those in vocational jobs leave school with good qualifications, they feel validated and proud.

Minor discrepancies of exam specs are irrelevant.
Nobody suggests repeating years, 10% could be dealt with by good intervention.

The broader point is it is possible to teach secondary school qualifications in maths without sets and enable 90% in a year, 80% in birth year to succeed. The 'pipeline' enables higher proportion of students to achieve better standards. Unlike the 'centrifuge' of sets.

What percent of students in a year of birth, say at 25, have the required pass of drade 4 GCSE English and Maths?

Do extra work with her either yourself or get a tutor. It’s good to practice topics frequently as after a while our memory fades. This is a good article:

mathagogy.wordpress.com/2017/07/29/the-best-we-can-do-7-the-spacing-effect/

Good to start in year 9 instead of just before gcse.

sometimes she is doing things that she have done in primary school

It’s a spiral curriculum and kids need to revisit old skills so that they don’t forget them. Don’t assume it’s a waste of time.

If she is getting higher marks than some friends in set 2, ask what she needs to do to move up a set.

My DD is in year 9, in set 3 for maths. A few days ago I went to parents evening and the maths teacher told me that she is more likely to take foundation maths. I am not very happy because when she is doing the end of the topic test ( they are the same in set 1, 2 and 3) she is getting higher results that some of her friends in set 2. I told the teacher that I better get a tutor because sometimes she is doing things that she have done in primary school and they are not teaching her all the curriculum.

EBacc

Still, the broader point is the French system deals with the majority without sets, and with a 10% minority who miss by repeating the years

The OECD/PISA survey disagrees with you on this point - over 20% of French school students repeat a year.

I am not even comparing Ebac pass rates vs Brevet, although it would be a more accurate comparison. Brevet and Bac force a broad and balances mix of subjects with compulsory maths

Not really - one fundamental difference - the Ebac requires a certain pass mark for each individual subject examined - the Brevet is awarded as an average score across a range of subjects - it is perfectly possible for students to achieve 8/20 for Maths, with 12/20 for French and still achieve the average pass mark of 10/20.

Clavinova, you are right, all that is true and consistent with what was already said. So what does it change in relation to the first quote in bold? The big picture?

Still, the broader point is the French system deals with the majority without sets, and with a 10% minority who miss by repeating the years. It has a transparent system to deal with the problem of learning pace and time, and provides for equal opportunity.

I don't want to go on and on about France, and certainly, you can count on politicians, the public, and the press in any country to cry that education is in crisis and standards are not what they used to be, just like here..
My example was not really about maths in higher education, and the Bac as like for like equivalent for the purpose of Maths degree completion. Although Scientific Bac would be a relevant contender. My point is about a balanced, holistic qualification, a required level of general knowledge of a good mix of 'facilitating' subjects, including compulsory maths, that can be successfully taught to 80% of population, without sets.

Seemingly 90% of the cohort (with some repeaters) can also achieve a Brevet at 15. France is not unique, Poland, Estonia also perform well in PISA and good Matura outcomes and you can't assume absence of poverty.

British students also resit failed grades, and good passes they want to improve, possibly a number of times, until they get English and Maths passes for jobs and FE.

What is the fraction of Brits in any year of birth who have good GCSE English and Maths regardless of resits?

English and Maths GCSE are a gateway to employment and Further Education in UK, this is why I talk about that. GCSE are also the benchmark of successful completion of 12 years of school. It is a general measure of holistic education for a 16 years old. It is the last time students study a broad range of subjects.

I am not even comparing Ebac pass rates vs Brevet, although it would be a more accurate comparison. Brevet and Bac force a broad and balances mix of subjects with compulsory maths.

England: entering Ebac 38%, completing Ebac at grade 5: 22%
www.compare-school-performance.service.gov.uk/compare-schools?for=secondary&show=All%20pupils%202018&datasetfilter=final

British universities also consider some combinations of A-levels and alternative qualifications on a case by case basis. There is also clearing and Foundation year entry and a number of alternative routes.
The possibility to register at university with a Bac applies only to general universities and I don't suppose they can register for a Maths degree with a humanities Bac professionnel. I mean those who really want to take Maths to high level in France would have a STEM Bac and would apply to the selective Grandes Ecoles via Classes Prepas - which are essentially selective first two years of a 5 years university study, which is customary. A good French degree is Bac+5(years) .

British universities, especially the lower ranking, have huge drop out rates as well. Have you actually looked into the finer details on unistats.ac.uk/searchresults/
I don't know the overall figure and the worst performing courses, but for example drop out rate of Bucks New university for Computing is 47%, Lancaster 24%, De Montfort 20%. The % of good degree classification of Royal Holloway is 52%.

The important difference is that British universities have second (the second second) and third class degrees. I am not sure they exist in France and elsewhere. You cannot pass to the second year there with an average below 13/20 if I am not mistaken. They will not issue a diploma with an average of below 13/20, while in UK it is lower and the first year does not count towards degree classification. So I kind of see why the drop out rate appears higher in France. There is also a bigger step up in terms of teaching style from Bac to university there.

But my point is not about Bac as an entry into university Maths degree, but as evidence of possibility to educate a summary 80% of population to a good standard of Maths without sets.

Still, the broader point is the French system deals with the majority without sets, and with a 10% minority who miss by repeating the years

PISA survey stats for 2015 (published 2018 - page 14) show 22% grade repetition in France (down from over 35% in 2009) - 35% grade repetition/retention in Belgium
20% in the Netherlands.

www.oecd.org/general/searchresults/?q=grade%20repetition%20pisa%202015

The Bac professionnel is equivalent to BTecs. But the latter are also accepted by universities

According to the British Council in Paris, entry to a British university with the bac professional is possible, but unusual (The bac professional is not highly academic) Kingston University's Art School will let you take an art course with a Bac Pro.

Still - everyone in France can sign up for a degree with a Bac pass - but over 70% fail to complete a degree within three years.

France, where the grossly unprepared try for maths degrees

www.economist.com/leaders/2018/05/05/france-where-the-grossly-unprepared-try-for-maths-degrees

Under French law, any student who passes their baccalauréat by scoring an average of at least 50 per cent has a theoretical right to enter the university course of their choice. Nearly fifty per cent fail their first year.The equivalent failure rate in Britain is 8.4 per cent;

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/french-universities-crisis-low-fees-and-selection-lotteries-create-headaches-in-higher-education-10517241.html

President Macron plans a radical overhaul of the baccalauréat to improve standards;
www.straitstimes.com/world/europe/france-to-overhaul-the-baccalaureate-in-tricky-school-reform

The Dutch were actually praised after a recent Pisa report for getting the lower achieving pupils to a very good level compared to other countries. So streaming might have benefitted those pupils. These exams taken by the 'bottom' stream may be watered down in the sense that there is no algebra etc but yet they seem to be at a good level overall.

The 'bottom stream' not being great at maths at 16 might be a result of sets, i.e. streams. The centrifuge effect of pacing progress by top attainers reduces the attainment in the middle and at the bottom. The Dutch may have dealt with this by watering down. Belgium has the same 'cascade' problem into lower streams highly correlated to socioeconomics, they realised the higher stream is ethnically and socially homogeneous groups over represented in higher streams and ethnic minorities are overrepresented in the lower stream. They have reformed their system recently to maximise the mixing and movement between streams and allow second chances. They get qualifications though to go on to FE and employment. Not having GCSE English and Maths is detrimental to that.

I am not suggesting we should copy all of the French , or Finish etc system.

Just imagine that 90% of students actually cal solve quadratic equations... I don'tr know, like the Finns, the French

I don't know about the Finns and the French but I just had a look at the Dutch maths exams for the 'bottom' stream of Dutch secondary education, attended by roughly 40% of all pupils. These exams are taken by those pupils at the age of 16. There are no quadratic equasions in sight at all! Or any algebra, really.

The 80% figure is 'in generation', i.e. per year of birth. The per academic year figure is 90%. Brevet is also 90%, so I would gess that is the policy, how they calibrated their exams. Obviously it is not an identical measure.
Still, the broader point is the French system deals with the majority without sets, and with a 10% minority who miss by repeating the years. It has a transparent system to deal with the problem of learning pace and time, and provides for equal opportunity.
Do those who repeat Bac at 21 have to pay tuition fees, like in UK?

It still shows that 80% of French population achieved a standard in Maths that is at least slightly superior to GCSE

Even if that were correct - at what age did they achieve this benchmark? In 2017: 140,000 French students sat their Bac aged 19, 34,000 aged 20, nearly 10,000 aged 21 etc.

Just realised Bologna process is only for universities, although I've seen something Bologna on entry qualifications. A mistake.

The equivalence thing for secondary school is The European Qualifications Framework (EQF)

The PISA maths paper (remember Finland's reputation rests mostly on its PISA performance) contains not a lot of actual hard-core maths (and it contained even less in the early 2000s). It is essentially a maths-y reading comprehension test, where you do things like read an article with an accompanying graph and then explain why the graph is misleading etc. etc. Very light on equations, calculating area and volume, things like that.

The PISA maths paper is a perfectly "good" test as a test of general statistical etc. literacy for the general population, but it is not a good test of college-readiness for STEM subjects. For that, you need to look at TIMSS scores. Finland scores below both the UK and the US on TIMSS.

theeconomyofmeaning.com/2016/11/29/timss-results-are-in-asia-still-reigns-finland-and-germany-see-lower-average-achievement/

Finland's education system has some good points and gets several things right but has been wildly overhyped by credulous journalists, and the Finnish cohorts who did really well (at PISA, that is) were those who went to school in the 1990s, so looking at what is going on in a modern Finnish classroom more than 2 decades later does not always tell you very much.

My pre-previou post went wrong. It should be this

As I understand it, your argument is that every child can be taught, and can learn, at the same pace, in the same classroom. In other systems, 90-95% can do, yes

Or perhaps that if a child DOES learn slower, then they should be given the extra support to 'close the gap' - so you are saying they do learn slower, but should be given the daily help that they need, to catch up. In the current system in this country, they should be given extra support, but not to keep them ‘working towards’, this crashes confidence and prevents from grasping concepts as per the next point. The intervention should bring them to ‘working at’. Intervention that stops at ‘working towards’ keeps children under an enforced ceiling.

However, particularly in secondary, where does that time come from? We need to openly acknowledge that time needs to be created somehow. By extending tuition to 18 for all, or just the lower stream. Reducing the curriculum to core subjects and having two maths lessons. Something got to give to bring the average children back within the threshold of GCSE success.

Either every child who needs the extra support must have two maths lessons per day (the Shanghai model, essentially) the main point of Shanghai is to remediate the problem immediately, not let the gap to open. This preserves confidence and motivation. OR the curriculum is arranged so that such children spend more time on each concept so that they grasp it (essentially the English model). I am sorry, this is perhaps the intention of the English model, but it is not the reality imo. The children who really struggle actually don’t grasp the concepts, precisely because of the way the tuition is arranged. They are left in a shaky state and lose confidence.

I was flamed in another thread to bring up learning styles. It means different things to different people. Let’s consider this.
Processing speed was discussed. OK, it’s a factor. Not all clever and talented people are quick, some start slow but jump far as it were. So a pedagogy based on speed will disadvantage many clever talented children.
The speed of passing CAT and the skills section is not necessarily a measure of processing speed. It is a measure of many things including coordination, executive functioning, attention and working memory.

I said working memory is important. My sense is that something needs to be done very early, from Reception to help DC with low working memory to cope. This is what opens the gap and they don’t grasp the concepts, and don’t retain them. It is a working memory problem. You need highly visual, multisensory approach from the start. It is too late in year 5, the damage is done. Memorising also helps. I can’t see anything wrong with memorising time tables, or fragments of poetry. Memorising simple formula helps deeper understanding. You can come back to the idea and reflect on it in a different context without having to go through the whole concept from scratch. We all know E=mC**2, but we don’t know the maths that derived it. But we can reflect on it.

There is that discrepancy in verbal vs non verbal reasoning amongst reasonably clever children. Perhaps those with weakness in verbal and strength in non verbal have better visual working memory. They rely on visual learning, while the tuition model is based on verbal and auditory. Maybe they just sit through verbal explanations waiting to see what it is about and then grasp it all at once, not step by step. These children would do much better with more visual presentation of curriculum and free time allowed for them to visualise and retain the concepts, to ‘see’ it as a whole.

Clavinova,

Ok, of course all systems have shortcomings. I am only making the broader point that higher proportion of population can be taught maths.

Just imagine that 90% of students actually cal solve quadratic equations... I don'tr know, like the Finns, the French

Severe shortcomings in Finnish mathematics skills

In 2005, over 200 university teachers - teaching maths at universities and polytechnics in Finland - were astonished at how poorly students could handle algebraic expressions and solve equations...it was not properly tested in the PISA study.

matematiikkalehtisolmu.fi/2005/erik/KivTarEng.html

I said working memory is important. My sense is that something needs to be done very early, from Reception to help DC with low working memory to cope. This is what opens the gap and they don’t grasp the concepts, and don’t retain them. It is a working memory problem. You need highly visual, multisensory approach from the start. It is too late in year 5, the damage is done. Memorising also helps. I can’t see anything wrong with memorising time tables, or fragments of poetry. Memorising simple formula helps deeper understanding. You can come back to the idea and reflect on it in a different context without having to go through the whole concept from scratch. We all know E=mC**2, but we don’t know the maths that derived it. But we can reflect on it.

There is that discrepancy in verbal vs non verbal reasoning amongst reasonably clever children. Perhaps those with weakness in verbal and strength in non verbal have better visual working memory. They rely on visual learning, while the tuition model is based on verbal and auditory. Maybe they just sit through verbal explanations waiting to see what it is about and then grasp it all at once, not step by step. These children would do much better with more visual presentation of curriculum and free time allowed for them to visualise and retain the concepts, to ‘see’ it as a whole.

The other point is even if you consider for the sake of argument that Bac Professionnel are hairdressers, it shows that they passed a Maths paper that is more advanced that the Brevet they ought to have passed at 15.

It still shows that 80% of French population achieved a standard in Maths that is at least slightly superior to GCSE.
I only want to say that it is possible to teach maths to more people.

USAS on equivalent qualifications.
Page 23 shows pass % for Finland. 5% Fail. 84% do Satisfactory.
www.ucas.com/sites/default/files/2015-international-qualifications.pdf

Clavinova,

Yes, there are different types of Bac. But all types are compulsory mixes of subjects, all at reasonable level. They are all 'facilitating'.

Scientific Bac is quite tough on STEM. Literary Bac is tough on languages and literature. Here there is an English translation of of a 2011 Literary Bac paper in Maths. Not the same as A-level Maths, but quite robust.
gfbrandenburg.wordpress.com/2011/06/19/a-look-at-one-version-of-this-years-french-math-baccalaureat-exam/

Not all mixes of A-levels are equal either. Those with A-levels in Geography, Psychology and Media Studies are not going to be admitted on Southampton Electronics course.

The Bac technologique is more applied, but it is not hairdressing! It includes business studies option for example, but A-level and other Level 3 qualifications also can have less academic combinations, including dodgy ones.

The Bac professionnel is equivalent to BTecs. But the latter are also accepted by universities.

The big picture imo is that all Bacs taken together are equivalent to all Level 3 qualifications taken together.

On the pass rates, even if you exclude Btechs as I don't know the numbers, just comparing the General Bac with A-levels there is significant difference.

A-level pass rate for 3C+ is 34% and this is only the proportion of those who entered 6-form.

79% of the 'generation' pass all types of Bac.

If you compare GCSE, the Brevet exam taken by most at 15 has the pass rate of 90%.
Here is the Brevet maths paper in French. One can see it involves advanced algebra and some complex common sense questions, like total cost of a journey for a concert for 3 people. Not just basic arithmetics.
file:///C:/Users/mvanh/Downloads/BREVETMathematiques2018.pdf

The Finns, the French, northern Europe, but also Estonia, Poland etc have no trouble educating those with 25-35%-tile ability to the equivalent of A-level

But only 41.1% of French students in your pdf link passed the baccalauréat general. Are you suggesting that recently qualified hairdressers and car mechanics in France are educated to A-level standard?