23rd April 2013 9:00
By Blue Tutors
According to a numeracy charity, National Numeracy, Michael Gove’s plans to redesign England’s primary maths curriculum, could leave many pupils ‘by the wayside’. The Minister for Education intends to make pupils learn times tables, fractions and long divisions earlier in their school career. This comes along with government’s plans to raise standard so that pupils can progress to a higher level.
However, the charity believes that pupils should be given the time they need to gain a more secure comprehension of mathematical concepts. According to the draft curriculum, primary school pupils will be expected to memorise their times tables up to 12 by the age of 9 as well as being able to multiply and divide fraction by the age of 11. Topics including long division, geometry, decimals and multiplication will also be included on the syllabus.
Currently, schools have somewhat more flexible targets that ought to be reached by the end of each key stage. Gove will be replacing these with more rigid annual targets which were termed by National Numeracy as ‘superficial rigour’. Although it welcomes the priority the government has placed on mathematics, it believes that the proposed changes to the curriculum contain some ‘serious flaws’.
Chief executive, Mike Ellicock, has written a letter to the Education Secretary on behalf of the whole charity, detailing its problems with the intended curriculum alterations. He states that before children can progress any higher in the subject, they must understand the basic mathematical concepts and how they relate to one another. Without these, the future study of maths is both complex and pointless and leads to students leaving school devoid of the maths concepts they need for life.