Forgive me while I go off the subject of computing etc, but I feel I have to comment on the British Prime Minister’s recent headline-making pronouncement that kids need to be taught maths until they are 18 years old, and that they should ashamed of not being numerate.
Well, I can’t argue with that last part. As I’ve written before in the context of digital literacy (however defined), how come some adults seem to take a perverse pride in not knowing how to use a computer? I’ve even been in a conference where the keynote speaker from Ofsted (the inspectorate for schools in England) has said, laughing, that whenever she needs to upload photos to the cloud she asks her five year old daughter to help. Unbelievable! Does she take her five year old daughter with her when she goes shopping, to read out the labels and check the change at the checkout?
Dang! I wasn’t going to talk about computing!
Anyway, Rishi made that announcement, followed a day later by the Education Secretary noting that the country doesn’t have enough maths teachers to make that happen.
This reminded me of an episode when I worked for the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA). We were having an all-agency meeting one day: tghe QCA, BECTA, Ofqual and the department for education. At that time therre was a rule that said schools could only access a huge amount of money for technology development if, and only if, they produced an acceptable online safety policy.
A bloke from the DfE announced, thumping his fist on the table, that we must make sure that no money is given out to a school unless it has a decent policy in place.
“And”, answered his colleague, “Who is going to check? There are 28,000 scxhools in the country, and only us two in the office!”
It was at that point I realised that half the announcements from the DfE can be ignored because it’s all just smoke and mirrors. (The rest of the announcements are often unworkable or stupid.)
(By the way, allow me to remind you that this website offers opinions, not advice. Ignore the |DfE at your peril.)
But what else was wrong with the PM’s announcement?
Here is what I’d suggest:
The best time to learn numeracy skills is in primary school.
Members of Parliament should lead by example. How often do we read that one of them claimed a load of money in expenses that they were not entitled to, because of “an accounting error”?
There are already enough numeracy/basic maths qualifications on offer, so we don’t need anything extra.
If a school can’t accommodate extra or different maths teaching, perhaps in some cases they could liaise with a local college or employers who already offer such training.
Anyway, I suspect that the PM made that announcement because it’s been at least a week since he pontificated about potholes. And by the way, if you think I’m being too political here, and picking on the PM because we have a Conservative government, the anecdote I related about the all-agency meeting happened under a Labour government.
Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.
Why not sign up for our newsletter, Digital Education? It's independent, opinionated, and free.