Teacher says dc can’t use ‘more advanced’ answers

[Purplyoctopus]

dc is in year 7 & is being marked down for putting ‘extra’ information on their schoolwork where their previous (very academic) school taught them beyond the ks2 curriculum they know how to answer questions in a more advanced manner than what is expected at year 7.

This is especially a problem in maths where dc will use a more complicated way to answer a question because it’s faster and still correct.

But teacher wants them to put all of their workings and use the more basic methods they teach in year 7 to find the same answer and has explained that one day dc will indeed be answering these questions in the way they are already doing them but not until later in secondary school. I find this so so daft. Aibu to say carry on as you are to dc as they need to know it for future anyway or am I missing something?!

I dealt with teachers who couldn't understand anything above the answers they had written down.

The fact I have had to explain this says a lot tbf.

You don't know that. And sorry but 'more advanced' doesn't mean better. Besides, from what I gathered the DC is using short cuts taught at her previous school. That's all very well, but they do need to show that they know the long way round - to make sure that they do.
This is a very similar discussion to one on phonics on another thread, where many posters said that DC who were good readers (as defined by parents/teachers) did not need to do phonics. But many of those 'good' readers could not accurately read the non-words on the phonics test and 'corrected' them to words they knew - which is poor reading, not good reading.

Please may we see some examples?

I don’t see why your DC is marked down except if the question is not answered, such as use one method to reach the solution but they use a different one. Even if this other method is faster, if the question doesn’t call for it, then they haven’t answered the question. It’s hard to see without an example.

Why can't your child just do as he has been asked by his teacher? He is no longer at the school where he was taught to do it in an advanced way - he is at this school being asked to do it this way. It is highly unlikely the teacher is asking just for the sake of it and is likely that the working out needs to not just be show but to be shown in a specific way to gain all the marks available for the question.

I was thinking that.

OP, I'd advise your DS to jump the silly hoops.

Encourage him to work ahead at home.

Meanwhile, look for another school.

How is your DC’s mathematical fluency, OP? Can he discuss his thinking with ease and coherently?

I don’t have a sense of whether he is applying more advanced methods with understanding, which could be great, or by rote. In the latter case it would be much more beneficial to learn the principles behind elementary methods before moving on.

I am not British and I am in a maths intensive STEM discipline; the only British maths curriculum I am familiar with is in the HE sector. However @noblegiraffe has touched upon a principle that is true doing maths from primary school to research level: it is never appropriate to use a machine gun to kill an ant. Is DS possibly using unnecessarily complicated methods? A teacher would be right to be concerned about that. It is correct but not optimal - the kind of thing that would generate criticism in a referee’s report, as showing questionable taste, in a research paper.

I realise this need not be happening. The teacher could be pedantic, out of their depth, or dictatorial. But I think only an exceptionally fluent child with an unusual sense of mathematical judgment would fail to benefit from considering how best to make use of the teacher’s suggestion. A ‘typical’ top 1% child could turn this into a learning experience.

This question is impossible to answer without examples. Some “advanced methods” eg using prime factorisation to do HCF or LCM rather than comparing two lists I would really expect to be allowed and be annoyed if not. Others like quadratic formula vs factorisation not so.

I'm so sorry @Purplyoctopus this must be very confusing and disheartening for your DC.

If you want your kid to use his initiative and excel at faster pace, home educate him. Otherwise, you have to do it how they teach you at school.

I presume he’s in top set?

OP - can you give an example? Maths teacher here, so may be able to explain why the teacher is doing this (or confirm they're being unreasonable).

How do you know she learnt advanced techniques? Who told you that ? If it was someone you were paying I may be cynical ?

how do you know she is now being marked down because if using these advanced techniques? Who is telling you this ?

I would book appointment with teacher and get to the bottom of it all

it’s odd that a gifted child who understands advanced techniques is now getting it all wrong somehow??

I have a feeling this is nonsense.

As an employer, categorically no this is not a life skill. This is everything that is wrong with uk education and job market…

So you don’t have interview and appointment processes that have scoring criteria looking for certain things?

You don’t screen applications based on matching to the job description?

Because if a question asks you to measure the diagonal of the triangle, it doesn't want you to calculate the length of the hypotenuse. And if it wants you to show that you're aware the angles on a straight line add up to 180 by subtracting the given angle of a single line emerging from it, it doesn't want you to create a triangle and use SOHCAHTOA to calculate it.

It's like if you were to ask me how to get to Liverpool Street by Tube from Victoria tomorrow morning; you don't want me to tell you how to get there by bus, train, horsedrawn cart and bicycle from Milton Keynes Central on August Bank Holiday Monday when there are line closures from Euston and trackworks outside Hemel Hempstead.

Answer the question you were asked, not the one you wish they'd asked.

The content is the content. The method and applying the content are two very different things.

My DD was exactly the same as your DS. She ended up nearly failing Maths in later years as she hadn't got her head around the fact that the answer was just one of the objectives. She had to work hard to unlearn that and relearn what she had missed.

It will not hurt your DS to follow the instructions - like my DD he may need to learn to temper being smart with humility - that's a life lesson too.

I want candidates that can answer a question with accuracy AND creativity. Bonus points if someone can find multiple routes to answering a question. I want someone thinking about the bigger question and finding solutions, not someone who has mastered the art of doing as little as possible while maximising against scoring criteria. I am sick of having to teach graduates how to think and not just jump through hoops.

Something drummed into us when I was doing my professional exams was that exams have a marking schema and the person marking the paper has to give points within the framework of the model answer(s) for the question set.
It's not fair on other candidates if there is too much leeway for awarding bonus points for flair, particularly if the technique that the question was set to test has not actually been used.
If your DC is using techniques that aren't on the marking schema they cant expect the full marks available for the question.

If the objective for the lesson is a particular method, then that is the method he needs to master in that lesson.

Sometimes we teach a particular method because we will revisit it in later years in a more sophisticated way.

I get fed up of smart arse kids telling me they don't need to learn a method because they know a better way - great, but your method won't work when we teach you X in Year 8.

Even worse when you have to field questions from parents about it. What's your job? Because I'm coming to your place of work to tell you what you're doing wrong. Having a kid doesn't make you an expert on teaching, learning or education. Can parents really not bear for their children to be a bit sad about something any more?

This person isn’t finding multiple routes - the exact opposite in fact.

Can you give an example? It would be a lot easier to judge then.

For example, let's say it was percentages.

16 % of 800.

Schools teach

100%...800
10%...80
1% ... 8

8x16=128

All written down , which can take a few extra seconds and has opportunities of making a silly mistake. Especially with a number that would involve decimals.

Or the much quicker version of 16/100 * 800 .

They aren’t being asked for multiple ways of solving - they have chosen an alternative way of approaching a problem and then being told it only counts if you do it the one ‘right’ way. I want employees that approach problems in different ways, not just execute against the user guide. Maybe the jobs I am filling are unique, but they are high paying and relatively safe from automation.

i was talking to a friend who teaches at a RG uni and she was expressing how depressing it is the number of students (not all, but a significant portion) don’t care at all about the subject, are unable to write compelling essays or engage in discussion and just want to know very specifically what is required of them for exams. I recognise these students when they move into the workforce and don’t give a damn about the business or their clients, but are laser focused on the specific boxes they need to tick to get the next promotion (and are outraged when it isn’t just about ticking boxes)

dc used for example factor trees instead of something to do with prime numbers I think? There was more than this but I don’t have the book to look at now. They weren’t allowed to use factor trees at all in their answer ant the current school and dc did.

Another maths teacher who would say it depends entirely on the topic and the child. By this point in the year I would expect to know my students well enough to assess whether they understood what we were doing and it was fine for them to carry on using their method or whether they really needed to use the prescribed method as a building block. For the prime factor trees, I’d probably have let them carry on but for smaller numbers it’s using a sledgehammer to crack a nut (assuming we’re looking for HCF and LCM).

I agree with this. If they were asked to find HCF and/or LCM of relatively small numbers, I would expect them to do it without the rigmarole of prime factor trees. Part of being a good mathematician is knowing the appropriate "tool" to select for the task.