Worried about level of Maths for year 4

[PeppyBee]

My son is in year 4 and always tells me the maths is too easy. I have spoken to the school many times and they tell me that they have to follow the curriculum. I have attached a photo showing what he is doing as homework at the moment. I feel it is far too easy for his age range and it really worries me that he is not being challenged enough. I wondered what your thoughts were? Also wondered if anyone sends their child to private school and what their education is like compared to this?

That looks like mathletics. In which case the teacher will be setting the work for the whole class.

it’s normal for homework to be essentially recapping previous knowledge.

1 more/1 less ten more ten less is usually covered in September as part of the return to school and getting them settled in. It comes under the “understanding the number system” topic.

of course the school may very well not be challenging your child but homework isn’t usually the place for challenge.

I get the importance of recapping, as it helps to reinforce what they have learnt, but I feel that for year 4 this is too simplistic and a waste of time for my son to complete. To be honest I think he would have been capable of this in Year 1 and if he got this type of homework in that year group, I would have been fine with it. I was interested to hear if others are experiencing the same worries as me about the level of the curriculum and the standard of education.

That does seem strangely easy, but it is hard to judge just on these couple of questions. My sons year 4 class (not private) have been working on fractions as decimals recently and lots and lots of times table practice ahead of the government checks. Have they also been doing these?

When my DD was in year 4 last year the homework every week was TT rock stars in preparation for the multiplication check.

We moved DD and DS (year 3) from a state school to a private school, partly due to the lack of challenge given to DS in maths. The state school set work as a whole class and those who needed help were given props to assist them but those who could do it easily in most cases were given 2 additional questions. DS was constantly saying he became the mini teacher in maths. I also found that the state school signed up to subject programmes and followed them without that much deviation on what the class could do.
Their new school teaches the same concept to the class e.g. fractions but pupils are given different levels of work to do. DS is now working at year 4 level with a few of the other pupils in his class and occasionally year 5 level.

The one thing I liked about his new school was when the headteacher said they like to see some wrong answers. If there are no wrong answers then the work is too easy and the child isn't learning. If there are too many wrong answers then it's too hard.

Don’t worry about this too much right now. Have a look around for YouTube channels working at your son’s ability level, and see if he gets interested in them. There’s loads of good, engaging maths stuff on YouTube at all levels. Get him a Rubik’s Cube and show him how people use algorithms to solve them.

When you look around secondary schools, ask them how they support kids at the top end of the ability range in maths. Look for non-waffly answers! You want engagement in UK Mathematics Trust competitions, and maths lessons banded by ability.

Yes lots of times tables but trouble is my son knows these all very well and from what he tells me this is all they are mainly focusing on for the upcoming timetables check in June. They do times tables rock stars he is so quick with these I think his average time is just slightly over a second per question so again no development here either. They have been working on fractions with the same denominators and making whole numbers with decimals such as what do you add to 0.3 to get to a whole number. Again my son finds this really easy. We sometimes do our own maths using Khan Academy and have been multiplying and adding fractions with different denominators, changing fractions to decimals and percentages and vice versa and he does this easily too. I try my best to give him a challenge at home but I am feeling limited in my own abilities now and just wish he could get the kind of challenge he needs at school.

Thanks PacificState that is a really good suggestion and really hope things will change when he gets to secondary school. We already have the Rubix, he has phases where he’s really into it then gets fixated on another hobby.

My son is slso in year 4. The last homework was interpreting bar graphs (including “how many more pears were eaten on weekends than weekdays for s graph that showed fruit consumed for every day of the week), and converting decimals into fractions.

Thanks for your response CoralLemur, I like the sound of that headteacher. I also like the idea of different levels of work being set, that’s exactly what he needs but unfortunately just doesn’t happen.

add on, my son is at a private school (non-selective)

My DD was like this and the work just wasn't challenging her enough. We actually got her a tutor in the end who was really good at challenging her (doing 11+ papers with her when she was 8 etc) and we found that really helped her re-engage with what she was learning at school and the whole "point" of learning

Thanks mariokart, I am seriously considering this too. I have been filling in the gap so far, but feel I am no longer at the level he needs to support him myself. I wish I was, as I love maths, but by brain is so much slower than it used to be!

Can use IXL/Khan academy to go a few years ahead. No reason why primary school students can't start doing secondary school maths if they can cope with it and enjoy it!

Just get some CGP 11 plus work books from Amazon for year 5? Age 9-10. And let him work through them. They then also do a stretch version. Also UKMT stuff? All available online. If they like Maths, you will most likely have to provide it yourself. My DS1 could do GSCE maths papers and score above 80% in year 4. There is no way school was going to be able to challenge him. It does happen quite a fair bit, especially with Maths.

Yes, it’s what we’ve been doing, we are on grade 5 of Khan Academy at the moment and have nearly finished it. Not heard of IXL will check it out. I have just checked the UK Mathematics Trust mentioned by PasificState and have just printed off one of their past junior mathematics papers. Looks really good and they have videos showing how to answer the questions. Thanks for sharing these resources it’s really appreciated.

So in terms of challenging him at home:

NRich is quite good - live challenges each month plus lots of previous ones split by area of maths.

https://nrich.maths.org/

There is a primary maths challenge that runs most years and they have past papers.

https://www.primarymathschallenge.org.uk/

Parallel by Simon singh do weekly puzzles abd webinars. He’s too young just yet to joint their programme but he might like their website

https://parallel.org.uk/

It's true- teachers aren't allowed to move kids on. I used to sneak my brightest year 3s year 4 work like a drug smuggler. The UK system fails the most capable children terribly and I wonder how much we could achieve if we maximised their talents instead of suppressing them.

No worries. Also could be good to start 11 plus prep, I have some resources for that I could share if you are interested

I was going to suggest Simon Singh as well — this (recognising that a quite a few young mathsy kids need more stimulation) is his thing.

I'm a teacher and I'll explain why your child isn't being adequately challenged. A teacher has the curriculum to teach. The way the curriculum is designed is to portion out all the concepts your child needs to master throughout primary school and each year gets its required teaching goals.
Now, when you are teaching a topic, the kids in the middle will get it with lessons and supervision, the kids at the top will find it easy and then the kids at the bottom will struggle. This goes for every subject.
The teacher is focused on every child reaching a certain level, knowing that some children could achieve far more.
The issue lies with 'challenging' the strong kids. Your options are to either a) give them work they can do while you focus on the weaker kids (not a challenge as they are capable of doing it independently) or b) give them something which is actually challenging which will then require you to give them instruction during a time when your focus needs to be on children who need you more.
I have always been happy to send home harder work with strong kids if the parents are happy to support them with this advanced learning. However, I can't justify spending maths time in the classroom focused on teaching a child something they will learn next year while some children need me to help them with what's required this year.

My year 4s are doing improper fractions at the moment!

does it matter if its easy?

ImImmortalNowBabyDoll you are right, I wonder what more they could achieve by nurturing their talents, whatever they may be and how much better this country could be as a result of that.

FlowerSticker, yes, I believe it does matter! It’s why I posted the question.

Around year 4, my daughter discovered the wonderful Murderous Maths books by Kjartan Poskitt. It opened her eyes to maths beyond school. She ended up with all his books and his puzzle books, read and reread them. Some we had to replace as she wore them out.