Exploring different approaches to teaching primary maths | Teacher Network Blog | Guardian Professional. A good understanding of mathematics not only enhances learning in science and technology subjects, it is also a fundamental skill relevant to many aspects of everyone's working and social life. As a nation we underperform in maths. The UK was recently ranked 28th out of 70 countries in terms of maths attainment in secondary schools and, in comparison with other countries, fewer students opt to continue maths beyond the age of 16. Last month Michael Gove announced proposals for shaking up the primary curriculum, and unsurprisingly maths was singled out for some of the most ambitious changes. The new proposals call for clearer, more specific key tasks, tougher targets on learning times tables, mental arithmetic and fractions; including a return to an approach described as 'memorising'. The "spiral" curriculum is a comprehensive programme ensuring continual revision and progression through small and logical steps but with key aims of mastery each year.
Maths. Why do we need maths? It gives us fun things to play with, for a start | Matt Parker. A report out today highlights government figures that 49% of the UK working-age population do not have the numeracy levels expected from an 11-year-old. The National Numeracy charity point out that the percentage of the workforce with insufficient numeracy skills has gone from 47% to 49% in eight years, an increase of nearly 2 million people. Putting aside questions about how 2% of the UK's workforce of less than 60 million people can be almost 2 million, it's undoubtedly a lot of people. But the question is: should we care? I think we should, but for completely selfish reasons. Most campaigns for numeracy focus on the fact that a functional level of numeracy is required to survive in our modern world. The recent payment protection insurance (PPI) problem could have been avoided if more people had the mathematical confidence to check the numbers behind the insurance they were being sold.
Very few people will need to solve a quadratic equation during their normal day-to-day life. Mathsplat.