To think if you cannot add one half to one quarter you really should not be in teaching

[mrgrouper]

I am starting teacher training in September and so have joined some teacher training Facebook groups. We all have to pass professional skills tests in literacy and numeracy. The tests are pretty easy but there is a mental arithmetic test that a lot of trainees are panicking on. A woman has posted that she is doing the mock test and it claims one half plus one quarter is three quarters and she has no idea how the examiners had worked this out. She is not training to be a maths teacher but surely all teachers should know basic maths. I knew this stuff aged 7.

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

loona13, the British did break the Enigma code. It was built on prior achievements by the Poles, but the hundreds of staff at Bletchley Park were mostly British. Or am I missing something?

[BalloonSlayer]

I do wonder though if she was just having a bad day / dumb moment when she wrote that, given she did once presumably get a GCSE grade C??

I thought the numeracy test you had to pass was for if you haven't got a C at GCSE

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

Happy to be corrected, but I believe all trainee teachers have to pass the literacy and numeracy tests, regardless of what other qualifications they have. Given the varying standards of English and Maths school qualifications over the decades, I think that's a good thing.

[PurpleDaisies]

No, balloon, everyone sits it.

[loona13]

Gasp here it is

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enigma_machine

[PurpleDaisies]

You need at least Cs in both maths abs English as well.

[YeOldMa]

Gasp, I think you are right. The minimum requirement was a "c" at GCSE when my DD wanted to teach. As a Primary School teacher there may be all sorts of things you might need to teach which you don't know about including a music curriculum, so you find out about them. I used to negotiate a swap for certain science lessons in return for Music and IT lessons which I felt I could add better value to. I do think being able to spell should be essential as should being able to do calculations with fractions, percentages, etc.

[UnikittyInHerBusinessSuit]

The Poles broke the original Enigma code using some innovative cryptographic techniques but by the time of WWII the Germans had refined their security beyond the level that the Polish techniques could conquer, so the combined efforts of the British, Poles (working in France and England) and Americans were required to keep on top of the various different German systems.

The fact that UK primary schools teach this as "Yay for Alan Turing and his team of plucky Brits!" is less of an indictment of the English education system and more an example of perfectly normal and universal patriotic prejudice.

[3littlefrogs]

We are having to do basic numeracy tests/courses when training qualified nurses to do simple drug dosing calculations. It is worrying how many of them can't work out 20% of 10mg for example.

[loona13]

Maybe last few lines here will explain it better

www.codesandciphers.org.uk/virtualbp/poles/poles.htm

[wizzywig]

Well theres hope for me to be a teacher then!!

[ItWentInMyEye]

My DD's report this year is littered with poor spelling and grammar and has also supposedly been checked and signed off by the Deputy Head!!

[IceBeing]

I helped a would be nurse understand percentages when I was stuck in hospital for 6 weeks as a teenager.

The problem isn't that people are too stupid to understand it ...the problem is they are taught so badly they are convinced it is hard and they are bad at maths...and it is hard to understand anything if someone is effectively yelling in your ear how stupid you are while you are trying to figure it out.

The help I gave was 98% reducing panic and giving reassurance of intellectual capacity and 2% explaining how percentages work.

The majority of adults who don't understand these things can get them, if you can get past the hang ups their early education gave them.

But..you know...rock on testing of 4/5 yo because that will definitely increase kids confidence and belief in education as a nurturing personal journey of enlightenment...

[PaulDacresMicroPenis]

I was actually pulled out of my primary school aged 8 as I refused to go in because the teacher could not multiply one half and one half.

Bollocks did you op

[yabvu]

Mov1ngOn

That's bizarre. My daughters doing this at 7.

are doing.... let those without sin, eh!

She probably should know the answer to that but as she isn't training to be a maths teacher, I couldn't really care. As long as she's good at her job.

[UnikittyInHerBusinessSuit]

The OP says she has ASD, PaulDacre. Having witnessed the carnage that ensued when a primary teacher tried to tell my DS that stars were made of gas, I can actually believe that in less enlightened times it might have escalated into an irreparable breakdown of relations with the school.

[Noodledoodledoo]

I agree with the sentiment about parents giving students the ok to not be able to do maths - drives me mad at parents evening. I have to really bite my tongue.

As for the numeracy tests all teachers have to do them - I have a degree in Maths and had to do it - I was incredibly nervous as part of it is a mental test which at the point in time I went into teaching my mental arithmetic was rusty and slow.

Having worked in industry for 8 years and used spreadsheets and calculators I was out of practice! When I started teaching my students times table recall was much quicker than mine - I know them but they took practice to be as quick as students who had learned/used them a lot more recently!

[Mov1ngOn]

Not are! I don't have 2 seven year olds. Just missed an apostrophe!

[sorenofthejnaii]

Maybe politicians should do a maths test as well. Such as understanding 'averages'

[callherwillow]

The sooner we remove the idea that teachers are in any way intellects, the better.

[PaulDacresMicroPenis]

Perhaps Unikitty but the way the OP phrased it sounds a bit bizarre, as if she was testing her teacher's mental maths skills

[RhodaBull]

But why can't all primary school teachers be Miss Read? Weep.

[BaronessEllaSaturday]

She probably should know the answer to that but as she isn't training to be a maths teacher, I couldn't really care. As long as she's good at her job

Op stated it was for teaching primary so yes she would be teaching maths.

[RhodaBull]

The thing is everyone goes on about failing schools and all children getting the best chances etc etc. Yet on here there are people defending a potential teacher who may well be let loose on pupils with a level of mathematics that is simply not acceptable for anyone, let alone a teacher. And all this guff about "learning ahead" - yes, that's ok if it's something knowledge-based and reasonably advanced - but simple fractions ? How about an illiterate teacher mugging up on a bit of Biff and Chip the night before so she can hear the children read?

[CalmItKermitt]

Sorry but I think that's ridiculous and totally unacceptable.

I'm no bloody Einstein by a long shot but really?? There is no excuse for not being able to work out something so simple. This isn't something like oh, I dunno, not being able to remember Henry the 8th's wives in the right order.

Shocking that someone with this level of cluelessness might end up a teacher 😮