Secondary Maths teachers - and tutors and parents! - what do you think of the Primary Maths Curriculum? What's most useful and what would you change??

[loveyouradvice]

Just that really....

I noticed that one Maths teacher on another thread said they felt the focus of Primary Maths was less useful since the 2014 (was it?) overhaul... and it was spread too wide, without enough focus on the basic skills most useful in secondary like Number Bonds and a couple of other things...

What would you do to change Primary Maths teaching to make Secondary Maths much easier and more of a natural progression for them?

And what do you think's most useful for them to learn at Primary school now, in our current system??

Parent here:it's sooooo boring. There needs to be a way to allow those who just get maths develop their skills rather than sitting bored because they can finish the worksheet in 10 mins, and then sit reading a book for the next half hour while others get the input they need to grasp the skills.
And yes, this applies to secondary maths too.

Oh @DongDingBell I SO get that... I'm one of those... and ended up just working through the books solo....

As an ex- teacher, that is just bad teaching. There should always be extension activities available.

but the question @Bigminnie1 - what do you think??

Agree, but there’s this notion of ‘stretching sideways’ and ‘going deeper’ without moving on to actual harder maths. Very few teachers actually have the skill to do this, and some children actually just need something harder.

I teach on supply and in only one class in 5 months have I seen any kind of decent extension for more capable students (and it was after SATS and the teacher almost whispered it to me like it was a dirty word to suggest the class were in 2 sets and doing different work). In every other class everyone has the same input, everyone does the same activity (maybe not everyone finishes), any extension is not really much harder, and then the children either read a book or ‘help the others’ (this is rarely helpful or beneficial to either party).

What do you mean by ‘harder’?

Well then, there is a serious lack of quality teaching going on - because this is across 3 schools, and 2 countries. Noone has kept up with DS2 maths ability. Noone has stretched him.

I honestly don't think it is the teachers. It's the constraints of "mastery" put on them. As mentioned above - some kids can just take more earlier. More of the same isn't the answer. It needs to get tougher - and for some kids much faster.

"Harder" something that isn't guaranteed to be right first time. Frankly, something he'd get wrong!!! This is a kid who has got between 98% and 103% (yes, honestly) on every maths assessment in secondary. And then has to sit through a lesson on how to answer each question.....

Getting 103% on a test is mathematically impossible - maybe your DS can explain that to you.
If a pupil is able to fully understand newly learned skills / maths concepts, then the best thing to do is to put those things into problem solving tasks whereby they demonstrates understanding of the things learned in a different way.
In KS2 SATS, the calculations required in the arithmetic paper are far harder than the calculations needed to answer questions on the 2 reasoning papers. For a child in Y6 who is working at GD, I’d ensure they were given opportunities to solve problems using more challenging calculations, where a key piece of info may be omitted or where at least 3 steps were needed to solve the problem. What I wouldn’t do is teach the one child a completely different concept at the same time as trying to teach the other 29 children Y6 maths - that would be impossible!

Yes, I understand the concept of %.

And, yes, the paper came back as 103/100. No, i dont know where he got 3 marks more than the paper was written for (or maybe the paper was out of 103, and noone ever bothered to convert it to an acurate % because the numbers were easier to handle if you didn't bother). But it was a ludicrous mark to hand out.

Your solution to kids who have finished sounds great - but it isn't universally applied. The OP asked what people would change. I would change the end point of "Sir, I've finished the extension work" from "well, get your reading book out then" to "here's some more maths then". And ideally that maths would be something he needs to think about, put down some working out, and might need a couple of attempts to get a final solution to.

I would allow all students who are working at 5 or below the opportunity to sit level 2 functional skills maths in y10 and then in y11 only do the gcse if they passed the functional skills and otherwise continue towards the FS.

that seems like a really sensible suggestion @TeenToTwenties

what are their arguments against doing this?

My guess is it would cost more and it might lower aspirations as some might think FS is 'good enough' and stop trying with the GCSE.
Could cause timetabling issues too and school maths teachers would need to learn the FS spec too.

Diving deeper questions should be more complex and demanding of previously learned skills. If they aren't then they aren't diving deeper questions.

My question to you is - if your child is that gifted, what have you been doing yourself to stretch and challenge him, given that you are his primary educator?

Fwiw, the KS1 and 2 maths curricula are probably the most academically intensive they have ever been. I don't think I would change anything but I would invest in training more TAs to focus in on the strongest and weakest of the cohort and help move them on. No-one should be sitting there bored and unchallenged.

If a kid is 'working at' a grade 5 in Y10 (how would this be measured?), then why on earth shouldn't they sit GCSE even if they fail functional skills? The GCSE is more valuable than the functional skills...

Well you are probably right, I think I meant predicted not working at anyway.

But what I hate is the endless resit in college so you end up leaving 2 years later with neither the GCSE nor the Functional Skills.