Learning to recite poetry from the age of 5

[Morebiscuitsplease]

While I have no problem with the emphasis on grammar and spelling. What does making a child learn poetry by heart really really teach a five year old? Surely appreciation and comprehension are more important. I feel that there are more useful things teachers could be doing with their time. Is this another of Gove's throwbacks to the fifties? if so, can someone please remind him we are educating our children for the 21 st century.

'Cullen opposes any hint of a return to rote learning. ?I have yet to meet a child who enjoys rote learning.'

Has Cullen not witnessed the sense of achievement and mastery when a child can spell complicated words, recite the alphabet, recite a poem or recite their times tables?

'Given the image problem that maths already seems to have among secondary pupils ? a recent poll by the Royal Institution had half describing the subject as ?too boring? or ?too difficult? ? rote learning may risk alienating them further ? the opposite of what the Government intends.'

This 'too boring' refrain is an excuse that children use when they are not capable of doing the subject. There is achievement in getting things right, and that includes teh pleasure and achievement in reciting complicated poems.

There has been too much dumbing down under New Labour, too much of the 'constructivist', progressive policy of pandering to perceived boredom etc. and not enough emphasis on core skills.

'?I don?t have any issue with rote learning of times tables for nine-year-old children,? argues Lynn Churchman. ?Most good primaries here do it already, but the problem comes when memory is the children?s only strategy for learning maths. Evidence suggests it just isn?t sufficient as they move on to more complex questions.

?But in China and other Pacific Rim countries, rote learning might better be called deep learning because they don?t tell pupils that it doesn?t matter as long as they remember the right answer. They also work to develop a secure grasp of concepts in maths, the way you get to the answer. That is what our children often lack.?

But memory is not the only strategy. Gove is not talking about increasing rote learning to the exclusion of everything else.

claig your posts give away how you feel about the subject, and the teacher who compared it to French gives the game away with that comment too.

A primary school teacher should know how to do the sums in the quiz they gave them, maths should not be seen as a "different language" but as your own language. A teacher should not have to go away and remind themselves how decimals work in order to teach it, they should know. It really is as simple as that.

And it is not the fault of teachers, obviously, it is a lot to ask that someone be skilled in all aspects of the primary curriculum. Most people have an aptitude for some things and not others. For various reasons many of our primary school teachers have an aptitude for things other than maths, they don't really "get" it, or love it. This is not a criticism, but an observation. Clearly if someone understands basic maths they do not have to go away and remind themselves how it works.

This is all such a mess.

The CEO of sainsburies wants people to learn sums by rote so that they can work well in his supermarkets.

Taking it to a higher level is of no interest to him. For his analysts and finance people he can turn to privately schooled people, who will have been taught the underlying concepts and had the opportunity to make a career of a fascinating subject.

I suppose it depends whether you want to ready children in the state sector for counting crates of tomatoes in a supermarket, or for having careers in industries like engineering, finance, research, pharmaceuticals, technology.

Lord Sainsbury and his CEO, and the Conservative party, doubtless imagine no more for state school children than the former.

'claig your posts give away how you feel about the subject, and the teacher who compared it to French gives the game away with that comment too.'

I like maths just as much as you do, I studied it just like you did. The teacher is correct. Testing reception level teachers on 2.1% of 400 is ridiculous, as is any attempt to bar them from becoming teachers if they are unable to get it right.

'The CEO of sainsburies wants people to learn sums by rote so that they can work well in his supermarkets.

Taking it to a higher level is of no interest to him. For his analysts and finance people he can turn to privately schooled people'

The CEO wants all his employees to be able to perform basic sums, and so does Gove. The CEO doesn't care where his employees come from, he has no snobbish preference for private school pupils, but he does want them all to have received a good education that enables them to perform basic sums. He wants to employ teh best analysts and finace people, and knows that most of them will come from state schools as opposed to private schools.

'I suppose it depends whether you want to ready children in the state sector for counting crates of tomatoes in a supermarket, or for having careers in industries like engineering, finance, research, pharmaceuticals, technology.'

Do you really have such a low opinion of supermarket CEOs and government ministers?

Have you not heard about teh amazing ex-CEO of Tesco, Terry Leahy, brought up on a council estate in Liverpool. He said this is a great country where no doors are closed to you, if you are good enough. He admires grammar schools and went to one. These people want all children from all communities to have an excellent state education just as good as teh ones that Cameron, Osborne or Johnson could afford.

That is what Gove is working towards delivering. That is why he is making changes and making waves.

Oh come now claig!

"Testing reception level teachers on 2.1% of 400 is ridiculous, as is any attempt to bar them from becoming teachers if they are unable to get it right."

Who has said anyone should be banned from being teachers?
Why is it ridiculous to ask primary school teachers some basic maths questions to find out what their level is. Would you really be happy having someone who does not know the answer to 2.1% of 400 teaching maths to age 11? And yet you say you love maths.

Would be interested to see your figures for what type of schooling the analysts and finance people at sainsburies had.
Having worked with lots of these type of people, they were disproportionately from private schools - as is the case with the more lucrative jobs across society.

Teachers have to pass the QTS in numeracy in order to be allowed to teach. Many teachers who don't intend to teach maths, do struggle with it and have to retake it again and again. I seem to remember that Gove has set a limit on how many retakes they are now allowed. So failure in these type of tests may lead to devoted and excellent teacher sof English or other subjects, not being able to get their teaching qualification.

I have worked with PhDs in finance and most of them went to state schools.

The purpose of some of these sensationalist articles about teachers, and the test questions asked of them, is to paint teachers as not being up to the job, or as you said yourself - of doing "a shoddy job". That is not true of the majority of teachers, and the teacher was right to say that she had not taught children over teh age of 7 for 4 years, so those test questions were not a fair reflection of the competence of maths teaching in our primary schools.

I wonder how well the Head of Ofsted would have done on that test

www.guardian.co.uk/politics/reality-check-with-polly-curtis/2012/mar/15/ofsted-chief-maths-wrong

I said that there has been a shoddy approach to maths in our schools for decades.

Please do me the courtesy of not pretending I have said things that I have not.

"the teacher was right to say that she had not taught children over teh age of 7 for 4 years, so those test questions were not a fair reflection of the competence of maths teaching in our primary schools"

NO

What an appalling attitude and a total incomprehension of what maths is and how it works.
If you understand how percentages work you don't forget. The only way you could forget how to do % in 4 years would be if you didn't actually understand them in the first place.

This is showing up exactly the attitude. So someone without a basic grasp of maths should be allowed to teach if they are passionate about english - I can't imagine many people would say the same the other way around.
The idea that it is acceptable for someone who does not understand basic maths to be teaching maths to our children.
And this is good? No it's not good enough and it's why the UK is failing our children and failing to compete. The attitude to the subject in this country is appalling, quite frankly.

'The attitude to the subject in this country is appalling, quite frankly.'

If it was that bad, then why didn't New Labour do something about it over 13 years?

Of course people forget how to do some percentages and quadratic equations and everything else.

'So someone without a basic grasp of maths should be allowed to teach if they are passionate about english - I can't imagine many people would say the same the other way around.'

I think a secondary school English teacher does not need to know all of the maths testsed in the QTS. There is a difference between basic maths and some of the maths tested.

'The idea that it is acceptable for someone who does not understand basic maths to be teaching maths to our children.'

I think the teacher in the article understood basic maths and was able to teach maths to 7 year olds and less.

' No it's not good enough and it's why the UK is failing our children and failing to compete. '

No we are failing to comepete because of teh dumbing down that has gone on in secondary schools. where exam boards set easier questions and where New Labour encouraged grade inflation.

"Of course people forget how to do some percentages and quadratic equations and everything else. "

The beauty of maths is that once you understand then you don't "forget". Just because you haven't added up for a little while you don't forget how to do it.

Your posts read as someone who does not particularly like or understand the subject themself, and so of course see other areas of the curriculum as taking priority and can't see the difference between rote learning and proper understanding.

Percentages are very very very basic maths and if someone does not understand them then they do not have a basic grasp of maths. You can pretend as much as you like that it's not a problem for people without a basic grasp of maths to be teaching the subject (and doing their level best obviously) but it is NOT good enough and I cannot understand why anyone would think it is.

Even this government have said this.

And a quick google gives me a report from ofsted about poor maths teaching

poor numeracy and the effect on people's lives

another article here

There is plenty out there on the subject if you are interested.

They are always blaming teachers - the people who deliver the curriculum that is given to them and which is decided on high. They never blame the exam boards and the people who devise the curriculum.

'In a damning report, the watchdog warned that the scale of underachievement at school was a ?cause of national concern? that risks robbing the country of well-qualified mathematicians, scientists and engineers.

It said that many of the most gifted children were ?insufficiently challenged? at primary and secondary level after being set the same work as mid-ranking classmates.

Inspectors insisted that too much teaching focused on the use of ?disconnected facts and methods? that pupils were expected to memorise and replicate without any attempt to solve complex problems in their heads.

Large numbers of pupils are also being pushed into sitting maths GCSEs a year early ? forcing schools to completely ignore many of the most demanding algebra topics, it was revealed.'

And yet Labour said standards in education were never so high, the number of As and A*s were reaching heights that the Great Leader in North Korea would be proud of. Their investment in education had paid off and any Tory who said the Education Secretary had no clothes, was lying. They told us on TV that critics were doing young people and their achievements down.

And then when the truth becomes obvious, when supermarket CEOs start complaining, they blame the poor old teachers, who are monitored, appraised and observed like never before.

What are you on about claig.

You think it is OK for a primary school teacher not to understand percentages.

And then blame children not being able to do maths on labour.

Ridiculous.

I'm going to disengage.

You have your drum to bang but you can't see what's right in front of your eyes.

Your attitude is the reason that our children can't do sums. The attitude that maths should be learnt by rote to "get it in" as doing the actual operations is so easy to forget.

No point in discussing a subject with someone who does not understand it.

I said that teachers who teach year 6, do understand percentages. I think reception teachers also understand basic percentages, but may not understand some more tricky percentage questions, but they don't need to.

I blame New Labour and Oftsed who are supposed to be monitoring what is going on. If it is really true that teachers of year 6 don't understand percentages, then what was New Labour doing about it? Did they provide additional training? Did they find that this was the case? Or did they tell us that standards were rising and "children were working harder and were cleverer" than they were decades earlier?

'No point in discussing a subject with someone who does not understand it.'

OK, then I will stop discussing it with you.

2.1% of 400 (the example you gave) is a very basic sum - I assume that you used it as you think it looks tricky?

All of our primary school teachers should be able to work that out.
Everyone in the whole bloody country should be able to work that out.
FFS.