Maths and Science teaching a priority, says Cameron

David Cameron announced the opening of a National College of Digital Skills in London in 2015, to enhance economic competitiveness in the global race.

There will be specialist training to improve the skills of 17,500 maths and science teachers.

However, Labour says the government has already failed to meet its teacher recruitment targets. They warned that the government’s teacher training policy was already leading to shortages. The Association of school and College leaders also warned recently that schools would have to recruit from overseas to fill vacancies, including maths and science teachers. They said “Shortfalls in the recruitment of maths and physics teachers are especially concerning”

Mr Cameron argues that maths, science and technology are the key skills for a modern globalised economy.

“There’s no secret to success in the modern world. If countries are going to win the global race and children compete and get the best jobs, you need mathematicians and scientists – pure and simple”

“So today, we commit to deliver more maths and science teachers”

“This is all part of our long-term economic plan for Britain – making sure our children have the right skills they need to thrive and get on”

The Prime minister announced the extra training as pupils visited Downing Street for a lesson in computer coding, as part of the international Hour of Code project.

“It will take time but it’s absolutely vital for the success of our country that we teach maths and science and computing in a modern way, because that will be one of the things that will determine whether we succeed or not” said Mr Cameron.

A £67 million initiative, covering the next five years, will give extra maths and science training for 15,000 existing teacher and recruit an additional 2,500 teachers.

Improving maths skills will benefit the competitiveness of the economy and improve job chances of individuals, said the Prime Minister.

New A-Level Maths to be delayed by a year

The introduction of new maths AS and A-Levels will be delayed by a year until September 2017, the government says.

The delay has come about due to fears students would struggle to bridge the gap between the current GCSE and new A-Levels. Nick Gibb the School Minister said the delay would give students the benefit of having studied the new GCSE maths syllabus which starts next year.

This will be welcome news to teachers, who have argued against the rushed implementation of the new A-Level Curriculum all along. The head of the teachers’ union ASCL said the decision was logical but should have been made “in the first instance”.

Exams regulator Ofqual and A-Level Content Advisory Board (Alcab), advised that the current GCSE maths and A-Level maths would not line up in terms of content.

National Association of Head Teachers’ general secretary Russell Hobby particularly welcomed this aspect of the deferment.

“It takes a long time for schools to prepare for a new exam properly. This includes changes to teaching programmes, resources and even staffing.” Said Mr Hobby

The new A-Level Maths Curriculum contain substantial changes in emphasis and content, with a  much bigger focus on making sure students embrace fluency, reasoning and mathematical problem-solving.

With teachers and students already having to adapt to a new maths Curriculum from Years 7 to 11 in Secondary schools, this will help relieve some of the pressure on teachers and allow them time to adapt. 

Australia’s Science and Maths are slipping, says chief scientist

Australia is well known as one of the best countries in the world for research, but its science, technology, engineering and mathematics performance is generally lagging, according to Ian Chubb in his new report.

Mathematical literacy in students, in particular, is slipping relative to the world, raising fears of a “growing cohort of students who might struggle to participate fully in a range of life situations and jobs in a modern economy”, the report said.

Australians like to believe they are punching well above their weight when it comes to research performance, but if you compare Australia to other free market economies this isn't necessarily the case.

 The report pulled together published information on a range of measures of stem performance including citation rates, research funding, international collaboration and maths and science literacy. The results were compared with the United States, Canada, New Zealand, 11 countries in Europe and another 10 in the Asia-Pacific.

As you can see from the chart above Australia comes in at an average position ranking at 14^th. There are lots of areas Australia does do well in though, with four fields in particular. These are Earth sciences, physical sciences, mathematical sciences and biomedical and clinical health sciences.

The concluding remarks in the paper about Australia’s STEM performance state “This overall performance means we have no room for complacency. Nor can we let STEM drift. We must distribute resources carefully and strategically, just like most other countries”

The report looked at the number of teachers with a maths-specific qualification for year 8 students across a number of countries. Australia had the second lowest proportion of teachers with a maths-specific qualification. This could help to explain the decline in Australian student’s mathematical ability, although the repost does point out that countries such as Sweden which has a much higher proportion of teachers with maths-specific qualifications is also declining in mathematical ability.

Chubb said science and maths teachers needed “a real discipline base” alongside their pedagogical training. “Even if they do a teaching degree it’s still got to have real science and maths in it” he said.

Over all the report states that their needs to be a rethinking and prioritisation of resources to raise STEM standards. The placement of specialist maths and science teachers in every primary school was seen as crucial.

If you would like to see the report in full just click on the link below.

http://www.chiefscientist.gov.au/wp-content/uploads/BenchmarkingAustralianSTEM_Web_Nov2014.pdf

10ticks famous Christmas Maths Worksheets now available!

With Christmas fast approaching we wanted to give everyone an early Christmas present. Our famous Christmas Maths Worksheets are now available to download from our website for both parents and teachers. Our Christmas Maths Worksheets contain lots of fun games, puzzles and activities, perfect for the last few lessons of the year or for at home over the holidays. They are a great way to consolidate basic maths skills in a fun and creative way. If more than 30 worksheets in total we cover all age rangers and abilities.

To access your free Christmas Maths Worksheets all you have to do is sign up to our website, you will then get instant access to these fantastic resources via your User Area. We also have lots of other fun and interactive Christmas maths activities on our Christmas page. You will find quizzes, puzzles, online games and even E Christmas cards. For our Christmas page just click on the link below.

http://www.10ticks.co.uk/christmasmathsactivities.aspx?tab=sls

Educating Yorkshire: Genius or just another Big Brother?

Educating Yorkshire has been a huge hit, with viewing figures in excess of 3 million, making it one of the highest watched programmes this year for channel 4. This got me thinking about how there is a genuine interest in finding out what kids are getting up to in schools. Of course there are positives and negatives to putting cameras in schools for all to see, an invasion on students privacy for one, as I am sure most don’t want their parents seeing what they get up to at school. Also are there repercussions in the future for these students when they try and get a job?

These are all important questions and 1984 always pops to mind when you talk about adding more cameras to an already over invasive society. But I think in this case getting an insight to the everyday lives of students as well as teachers, gives the everyday person much greater respect for a sometimes under appreciated job. One thing I am interested in exploring is how schools can implement this on a smaller scale and that doesn't take up to much a teacher’s already busy schedule.

First of all what are the possible advantages of implementing something like this? One of the big advantages is cutting down on low level disruption. If students know they could be being watched by their parents they are much less likely to act up as they know they could get a telling off at home. This is similar to the Hawthorne effect where an experiment was carried out on workers in two workplaces to find out what effect light had on productivity. What Hawthorne found was that productivity would increase during the experiment and then slump again when it was concluded. He concluded that the workers were more productive if they knew someone was taking an interest in their work. Whether or not having students knowing their parents could be watching would improve class behaviour or even results remains to be seen but it could be a possibility.

Another positive is getting more parent involvement in the school. Too often the only contact parents have with schools is a parents evening once a year. Being able to see their children in class and to see how they actually act in class could give parents a much better insight into how their children are actually doing at school. They can then push them on if they are acting up in class and get them to knuckle down and likewise if they are doing well they can reward them and encourage them to keep going.

There are of course negatives to an experiment like this. The first is teacher’s time, with an already busy schedule do teachers need another gimmick that will distract from the actual teaching of the class, and will students just act up if they know they are being filmed. I think this is an important question and if the project were to be time consuming than no this wouldn't be worth it but as I will point out later in the article there are quick and easy ways in which you can set this up.

Another important area to bring up is whether more cameras in life are a good idea. The average person is already caught on camera 300 times a day, do students and teachers need another aspect of their lives monitored? I think this will be the biggest reason a project like this won’t get off the ground as it is already such a sensitive topic and it may cause issues with some parents.

The time and cost of implementing a project like this I believe could be very little in terms of time and completely free financially. Having worked in a small company you often have to find solutions to problems quickly and cheaply. I had to find a way to deliver a talk to teachers all over the world all at once and for it to be cheap or free but also look professional. At first I thought this was an impossible task, but after a bit of research I quickly discovered there were a number of free services out there that could deliver exactly what I needed. The one downside side of using a free service is there might be the odd advert but these have a minimal impact most of the time.

The main streaming software I used was Ustream, this is free to use and viewers watching don’t have to sign up, which helps keeps things simple. One of the really good features of this is that you can link it to your Facebook page, making it really easy for parents to find and access. Ustream will also record and store the live stream for you and save it on your account and on your Facebook page as well. So parents that are at work or are busy can watch it later when they have some free time, making it more accessible to everyone. All you need to set this up is to have a webcam linked to a computer with a view of the class, and then you just click ‘Live Broadcast’. This will then go straight out to your live stream account and Facebook page for parents to watch.

As teachers it is important to find innovative and interesting ways to incorporate technology into the classroom, but I think the key thing is to make technology work for you. By using a free streaming service and a webcam, it is a cheap and simple solution that won’t take up much time but delivers something exciting for parents, teachers and students. This could even be used as a marketing tool for schools allowing them to show prospective students and parent’s fun and rewarding lessons with the schools best teachers. This could be much more effective and then the traditional prospective and power point presentation and show off the best qualities of your school in real time.

Secondary Schools set to increase amount of maths teaching time

According to a recent survey, more than a quarter of schools are planning to increase the amount of time spent teaching maths next year. This will be in time for the new Maths GCSE set to come in next September. Half of schools have said they will introduce new training programmes for staff and a third of schools are going to recruit more maths teachers.

The survey finds that 28 per cent of secondary schools plan to increase teaching time for maths by up to one hour at key stage 4, while 27 per cent aim to do so at key stage 3. Half of secondary leaders say they will introduce a programme of professional development for maths teachers and 36 per cent say they will recruit additional staff.

The findings were carried out by the National Foundation for Educational Research for the department of education, who surveyed school leaders and teachers.

Reforms to the maths Curriculum aim to make it more challenging, with a greater emphasis on problem-solving. The syllabus has been expanded by a third, with new topics including ratio and proportion. Students will be required to tackle financial mathematics and learn mathematical formulas by heart.

School reform minister Nick Gibb said he welcomed the news that teachers were responding to the new course by increasing the amount of time spent on maths. “Our plan for education is ensuring more pupils will benefit from an increased focus on maths and other key academic subjects,” he added.

The survey finds that half of schools are planning to retain existing systems for assessing students’ progress in the new national curriculum, introduced this September, while 23 per cent say they are going to use a new system developed by their school or group of schools. A further 19 per cent are undecided.

If you think you are good at maths, this guy is on another level!

A fantastic TED talk from Arthur Benjamin, who makes maths exciting and fun. He races calculators and guesses birthdays, as well as teaching a few interesting short cuts to solving maths equations. Watch the video to find out how he does it.

http://www.ted.com/talks/arthur_benjamin_does_mathemagic