New curriculum - Maths

[SockPinchingMonster]

I have twins who have just gone into year 3 so last year they were still working on the old curriculum (as all year 2's were). Both are pretty good at maths and achieved 3A's at the end of the year, they had been going up to work with the year 3 teacher to stretch them a bit and they were really enjoying maths.
However, this year they are working on the new curriculum and so far they have been completely bored in their maths lesson. I wonder if anyone with any knowledge of how the new curriculum works could tell me whether it's normal for the entire class to have to start off by doing tasks that are very basic and they have been confident in since year 1 ( basic ordering numbers up to 10, basic partitioning of 2 digit number etc). They seem to have different bands of tasks; bronze, silver, gold and platinum which get progressively harder and everyone has to go through every task even if the work is way too easy. I don't have a problem with this system in itself but even the platinum level work still seems basic ( so yesterday was order numbers up to a thousand ).
They are really not enjoying it but we've been led to believe that under the new curriculum they won't be given any harder work from the year above for example so what do I do if I have children who are bored and are not being challenged.
So sorry for waffling - just wondered if anyone had the same problem, or if any teachers can clarify that this is how the system is now and we just have to accept that. I don't want to go harassing the teacher about it, she's a NQT so I don't want her feeling that I'm questioning how she does her job - or should I be expecting a bit more from the school and what would be the nicest way to raise it ( without sounding like I'm criticising the school ). Thanks in advance.

Its called mastery. You can not begin to teach objectives from the year above. You can only depend and extend their learning in their year group.

ensure depth of learning even. Its been a long day!

IME depth of learning can mean everyone listening to the same lesson talk then giving the more able child a more difficult worksheet to get on with. Sometimes this is only after they have done the easier sheet which everyone else is doing.

I'm not saying this happens in every school, but it can happen.
Also, I cannot see the logic in not teaching a child more in maths if they are capable and eager to learn (other than it being easier to teach children who are roughly at the same level). Mastery seems like an excuse for not advancing a child. There will always be more minutiae to cover. To give one example I had a teacher tell me that dd had not mastered adding or subtracting 9 by adding 10 and taking one away because when tested she was not fluent in counting backwards from any double digit number in eights, so could not progress to the next level.
I started not wanting to be "one of those parents" and found the school could fob me off easily with a few mistruths. I am now "one of those parents" and dd is doing a lot better at school. The squeaky wheel gets the oil.

I'll repeat what the curriculum says

""The expectation is that the majority of pupils will move through the programmes of study at broadly the same pace. However, decisions about when to progress should always be based on the security of pupils’ understanding and their readiness to progress to the next stage . Pupils who grasp concepts rapidly should be challenged through being offered rich
and sophisticated problems before any acceleration through new content "

There is nothing to stop schools offering work from the next stage

New assessment information was published yesterday

A statement from the report on assessment

"Many schools seem to have adopted the word ‘mastery’ to denote a high level of performance against curriculum expectations (p17)"

Suggests mastery is no longer a DfE focus

Thanks Mrz, that's really useful. My DT's are still working on ordering numbers this week and their homework on the subject took all of 30 seconds to complete so I know this is not the correct level of study for them.

From the quote you've mentioned I now have a clearer understanding of how the school could be dealing with higher achievers so I'm going to wait til parents evening and try to discuss with the teacher. I don't want to come across as a awkward parent though. As a teacher would you think I was a pain if I mentioned this? Would you feel offended that I was questioning how you do your job?

I don't want to cause hassle for the teacher but then again I don't want my kids to lose their interest in maths and stagnate for a year.

I would mention that they are finding the work too easy and aren't being challenged. If the school bring up the curriculum, then I might point out the parts of the document that dispute that. But I have a tendency to be a massive PITA.

Mrz, do you know where this myth started? It seems to have taken a strong hold over the last few months. To the point that it's looking like some teachers and HTs haven't actually read the statutory document they are supposed to be working from. It doesn't actually make any sense if you look at the curriculum.

No idea where it started but it's repeated so often. I get blank looks when I've pointed out that's not what the curriculum says ... So I would agree lots of teachers and LEA advisors haven't actually read the curriculum.

The new assessment frameworks don't include the word mastery anywhere.

Perhaps the schools using the word "mastery" should replace it with the phrase "security of pupils' understanding".

So in our school we have been (for the first time) quite prescriptive as to expectations for each year and not to teach above the year. However we have been giving a lot of support on using solo taxonomy in order for the depth and mastery of each level. At this point in the year most teachers are finding the raised expectations of each year group sufficient but in terms of how can number bonds to 20 be taught at mastery level we would be using a lot of problem solving for pupils to demonstrate their understanding. Leading to an understanding of algebra and how it can be used in a range of contexts. Sorry if this doesn't help... regardless your right not to want your children to be bored!

The newly published assessment framework uses "Wiring at a greater depth within the expected standard" ??

Working!

I have never understood why limits are put on child's progress, other than where would be the advantage of paying for private schools if the state schools were not striving for mediocrity?

There aren't any limits

No, just obstacles. The latest being assessing the pupil's "security if understanding" before teaching them anything new.

"security of understanding"

More learning to count back fluently in eights, or equivalent.

You could address 'security of understanding' and offer 'rich and sophisticated problems' without making kids who have quite clearly grasped the concept fully drone through exercises that are ridiculously easy for them first. And there's a ceiling on how rich and sophisticated you can make a problem sticking to very basic ideas. You can't make number bonds to 20 rich and sophisticated enough for able primary kids, unless you combine it with something more complex, which would defeat the purpose, because the problem would be about the other concept. Except we all know it's just going to be used as yet another excuse for the teachers/ schools who already won't stretch able pupils, and make no difference to those that do teach well. And in my opinion it's the kids who aren't actually that confident with a basic concept that would most benefit from exploring it in depth.
It's an undisputed fact that no matter what school or support some children have, they aren't all going to be capable of a*, a-level or a degree in maths, so why the hell any policy should assume they are all around the same level at primary school is beyond me.

Securing children's understanding before moving them on does make sense. And I think it will be good for those children who were just pushed upwards to meet targets and might have had some weaker areas that needed consolidating. But there are children who have secured the concepts who will be learning nothing if schools refuse to move them on.

Given that the year group objectives aren't statutory for particular year groups, only for keystages it doesn't make any sense that you can't teach yr4 objectives in yr 3.

www.ncetm.org.uk/resources/46689

A link to help

Look in your son's year group. It tells you the objective. What it looks like at EOY expectation and a deeper understanding.

You might also like to look at how some schools are using mastery www.mathematicsmastery.org/what-we-do/primary-school-programme/

Maths mastery is an interesting one. A lot of their number obectives are taken from the year above in the new curriculum.

Yr 2 for example teaches counting, place value, addition and subtraction mentally and using the formal column method with numbers to 1000. Those are yr 3 objectives, so aren't even in the same key stage.

I wonder if some of these schools are going to get a big shock when ofsted come. They will be looking for the most able to have made progress from their starting points and they are unlikely to be fobbed off with 'it's the new curriculum' because they will know better.

Thanks for the information about the new assessment framework mrz.

Some useful links, thanks folks. I've only lightly skimmed the upper-KS2 examples, but a common theme for their Mastery in depth appears to be:

Explain your choices
Explain your reasoning

That's my emphasis of a word that we can find elsewhere immediately after verbal and non-verbal. I think a significant part of this apparent 'depth' will have the brightest children largely performing, demonstrating what they are, not learning that much more in the conventional sense of the word. Perhaps these exercises will improve average cognitive ability in this domain a little, but DD had some of that kind of depth back in primary and it just wears thin after a while. If she were going through primary again with a strict mastery approach then I think I'd still be grumbling about parlour tricks and pining for some substantial algebra by around Y4.

I suppose there are good reasons not to make too much public fuss about the relationship between cognitive ability and school maths, encourage some children not to give up on things they may well be able to do with more belief+time+effort, but there clearly is a relationship. This is especially visible via that familiar parental anecdote where for instance, school said bright DC is level 5 but they did a level 6-8 paper and achieved a level 7.

Ignoring tutoring etc., if you want to understand how that can happen then just take a close look at the curriculum, the levels, papers and some of the topics. For instance "Percentages" is spread across different tiers of papers assessing levels from 4 to 8. The most difficult percentage questions aren't testing whether a child has been exposed to some additional arcane knowledge, they're testing whether the child is capable of using the same fundamental concepts required for the easiest questions, in a more challenging setting. But almost by definition, certainly by measurement (IQ/CAT tests), bright children are knowledge generalisers who are relatively good at putting concepts together and/or using them in an unusual context i.e. some just do what comes naturally and get those upstream questions right.