I was reading parenting site in my native country, and there are a debate going on about maths marking.(primary.) A lot people think it's stupid, but many also says they need to follow national guidelines.
The Question was :
Radius of the circle is 1.25 m.
a) what is diameter ?
b) what is the circumference? (use π = 3.14)
The child written down answers as:
a) 2.50m : not wrong but -2 points taken off.
b) 7.85 m^2 : full mark.
The child got points taken off for writing a) as 2.50m rather than 2.5 m. I thought it was petty, but apparently, in my country, they teach children to avoid writing/cross out unnecessary "0" in primary.
From what I read, government guidance is the same, but there is no guidance to take off points/marks just because the child put "0". So some teachersare seems to take it literally.
Coincidentally, my ds was doing some on-line assessment last night(automatic marking) on British maths website , and similar things happened.
One question was asking about making the 1:100 scale model for 3m object. There was no indication for m/cm, so he's written answer as 0.03m. It was wrong. It had to be 3 cm. I sort of get it, 3cm makes more sense than 0.03m, but technically, it's correct. And they didn't ask specifically that the answer to be in cm.
Another one was asking the total price, he answered "£13.00" and got wrong. Answer was "£13". It's also technically correct.
In the real life scenario, how is it going to be marked in England?
Another thing I wanted to ask is, the site like BBC BITESIZE only shows one way to answer the question. How does that get marked?
There was a question: Simplify √8/√6.
My ds has learned from American sites and done it as
making it 2√2/√3 first, and and times√3/√3 to get the answer 2√3/3.
BBC BITESIZE does it different. They times √6/√6. I don't know which way is simpler/efficient. The answer was exactly the same, so neither was wrong, I assume? Or am I wrong?
How do they get marked if the child done it different ,but get the right answer from how they teach in England?
TIA