Question Time view on primary schools

[jacobibatoli]

last QT a retired Maths secondary school teacher said that over her 37 years she had seen a steady decline in the grasp of basics from school kids coming from primary schools
they no longer knew their tables or could do fractions
this is a very big reason why secondary schools struggle if the kids that are delivered to them don't know the basics
my kids have gone through this stage and the primary school did not practise the times tables enough or have get a good enough grasp of fractions
I am not an educationalist/teacher just a despairing parent
I think primary schools are failing the kids who do not have a good grasp of the basics

I struggle with this as my children are at primary school and do learn their times tables and both do fractions. The elder one knows all his tables to 12 12 and can multiply and divide fractions with ease (y5) the other one is on route to doing that. I think maths teaching is far better than when I went to school. The emphasis on understanding what a number is early on, and then learning several different methods of doing something (so one is more likely to click) seems to work. However I guess the children currently at Secondary school might have been taught in a different way as the curriculum and teaching methods change all the time.

I am glad that yours have that grasp

I can only speak from my own experience and talking to other parents
I don't think the tables or fractions are practised enough
maybe some of that is due to the advent of calculators
if you speak to secondary school teachers who have to teach maths they are going to struggle if the basics aren't there

at the secondary school my kids go to the number that can't get a c at maths is shockingly high

my point is that it is a domino effect that should be caught at primary school

Oh cobblers. Children have never been as mathematically drilled as they are now compared to the last 35 years.

And what are you doing to help your children learn their tables? At my school, we do lots of work on multiplication facts, but the bottom line is that they have to put in the effort (helped by their parents) at home too.

happy to disagree with you completely
the rigour is not there
happy for you if your experiences are otherwise
and it is also the experience of some teachers too, not just the QT teacher who would have no reason to say otherwise

thatdearoctopus
I did help mine at home with their tables and with their fractions too
and they have no problem with these
but not all kids have help at home and those that don't, rely completely on the schools
I agree that it should be schools, kids and parents but not all kids have all 3

Don't use calculator s at primary anymore ime-there is no longer a SATS calculator paper

They need to learn their tables by heart, and to understand to do that by constant repetition. I found that learning by heart is a skill that seems to
be beyond a lot of people nowadays. As far as fractions are concerned, I started doing fractions at secondary school. I feel that too many concepts are being introduced at primary level, before children have the mathematical maturity to cope with them

sn1ce
that is good news wrt primary schools (but they are overused in secondary schools)

eddiemairswife
I agree wrt repetition
I think primary schools kids should be able to cope with simple fractions and their equivalent to simple decimals (using money as a good example)

People who are retiring always look back to a non existent 'golden age'
of yesteryear! I would take it with a pinch of salt and have a good read of the primary school maths curriculum whilst you are doing it.

In my experience there are about 10-20% of children who struggle with Maths at primary school. Really struggle. Depends on the area the school serves and the SEN children. Poor teaching at secondary school ensures many more children do not reach C grade. There is more poor teaching in secondaries than in primaries.

When I was at school we had a group of about 12 (out of 40) who really struggled with maths and could not have accessed the secondary curriculum. I went to a grammar school and I struggled and I never did get multiplication and division of fractions! These days, that would never happen! The primary maths curriculum now covers topics from Y7 previously. There is plenty of rigour at primary. I think you need to be better informed about the curriculum and less swayed by misinformation.

My dd passed her sat but she is struggling in secondary school because she does not know basic thing, like division, multiply with decimal, algebra ( basic)..,

How could a child pass the SATs without knowing the basics ...did someone else do the tests for her?
Children have three test papers one Arithmetic (basics) 2 reasoning (applying those basics) https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachmentdata/file/524052/2016ks2mathematicspaper1arithmeticPDFA.pdf

Imo, they spend too much time going over times tables.
They start in ks1, and huge part of lower ks2.
If children are not getting it, they must be doing something totally wrong.
Fraction as well. Once they get the concept, there are nothing so tricky about it.(Well, maybe concept of times and divide for some, but once they know how to handle it , nothing tricky, imo.)

I was just about to ask how you apparently know in detail what "all primary schools" are or are not doing, when I re-read this in your OP: I am not an educationalist/teacher just a despairing parent.

Your observations based on pretty much no evidence run in total contrast to mine, which are based on 30+ years of actual teaching in primary classrooms.

My experience is not how op describes at all. Both my dds (yr 8 and yr 5) drilled a lot on times tables at primary, work in fractions, % , no calculators allowed etc etc

Related, but why does knowing times tables help beyond speed of calculation, which is valuable of course, but I don't see why it would be a fundamental barrier to accessing later maths?

As irvineoneohone suggests, the concepts are not that complicated, and if you don't understand the concepts, having rapid recall of times tables isn't going to help you, but more mask it.

Exactly it's a speed thing

why does knowing times tables help beyond speed of calculation

Cognitive psychologists argue that it's a question of freeing up limited working memory. Having facts stored in long term memory for instant recall is important. For some children, if they don't know their multiplication facts, they will struggle to remember the original question by the time they have worked the fact out. Automaticity prevents this.

The same cognitive psychologists argue that times tables should not be learned only as a sequence (i.e. by chanting), as this method is often ineffective. Instead the individual facts should be mixed up and learned individually (e.g. by flashcards).

Practices in individual schools vary enormously, just as they do for phonics teaching, for example. There are undoubtedly many primary schools that do a good job of teaching maths facts. However, I have seen plenty of secondary teachers complaining about this, so there must also be a number who aren't.

thatdearoctopus It's really not on to put in quotes something that the OP hasn't actually said. Also, English is very ambiguous when it comes to quantities and unmodified nouns: people often mean "some" or "many". In my opinion, it's unfair to assume they mean "all" when they haven't actually specified that. It certainly doesn't help reasonable discussion.

Sirfred, I think having a instant recall of times table will benefit greatly doing harder maths. Calculating area and volumes, factorizing polynomials, etc.

kesstrel, fair point, but I'm not sure I can be bothered to engage properly with such an OP.
I did, however, appreciate your posts, as you seem to know what you're talking about. The OP is merely expounding a populist notion that "schools nowadays" aren't doing their job properly. I object to that most strongly.

This can't be true. I was in school thirty years ago and all my teachers were wonderful hippies who were much more interested in letting us be creative than bog us down with restrictive notions like spelling, grammar and times tables .

My experience of school looks nothing like that of my children's, which seems regimented in comparison and where the kids are drilled within an inch of their lives and where every ounce of learning must be configured to a ticky-box.

My kid's primary seems to do a decent job of teaching its pupils the basics. Unfortunately my DD hasn't picked up maths well, she tries hard, I do daily practice with her, the school teachers are excellent and SATs results great, but some kids find maths hard and in yr 6 DD is still unreliable with tables, etc. No SEN, just not a maths star. Hopefully she will continue to try hard at secondary and get her GCSE C ( or whatever the equivalent is under the new marking system) but the school is not at fault. She is improving, it's just a slow process. Communication with school is good.