Prescribed medication order and communication skills.pptx
Maths
1. Maths: should English schools look
to Switzerland rather than Shanghai
for inspiration?
1. Mark Boylan
Professor of Education, Sheffield Hallam University
When it comes to education, how countries rank against each other in league
tables has become a big influence on education policy. And one of the biggest
rankings is the Programme for International Student Assessment – also known
as PISA. This is a regular comparison of the performance of 15-year-olds in
different countries, including in maths.
Increasingly politicians want to see their countries rise up the league tables,
which has led to attempts to import ways of teaching from overseas. In England,
many schools have adopted East Asian methods in maths teaching to try to
climb the league tables. This has come be to be called the “mastery maths”
model.
Singapore and Shanghai both do very well in international PISA tests compared
to England, but the way both places approach mastery is slightly different. The
mastery method adopted in English schools has mostly been modelled on the
Shanghai system – and has involved teachers from England going to Shanghai
and having Shanghai teachers go to England.
We have spent the past four years researching whether the Shanghai exchange
would lead to changes in teaching in England and whether this would lead to
better test scores. We found that in many of the schools that were involved in
the first exchange in 2014-2015 there have been a lot of changes – and many
adopted Shanghai-style maths teaching. These changes have involved slowing
down the curriculum, using more learning by heart, more interaction between
teacher and pupils, and using different ways of representing maths ideas.
Schools have also adopted ways to give all children access to challenging maths.
But when we compared the test scores to similar schools who have not adopted
the mastery method, we found there had been no change in the test results of
11-year-olds. For seven-year-olds we found a small change but nothing that
would suggest a massive improvement in scores from the new mastery method.
2. Importing education
Perhaps this isn’t surprising though, because teaching methods are not the only
reason for East Asian success. And in some ways, Shanghai maths hasn’t yet
had a fair test in England. UK teachers have been expected to adopt Shanghai
approaches, but have not had the same amount of time for professional
development or to plan lessons.
There’s also the fact that in Shanghai primary schools, children are
generally taught by the same teacher for two to three years – so the
teacher gets to know the pupils very well. Policies in China that have led
to many parents only having one child also mean that young children get a lot
of adult attention from parents and grandparents – which could also help their
developmen
Although Shanghai maths imported to England has not had the effect on results
that was hoped for, it does not meant that with more time it cannot lead to
improvements. And there are particular ideas in the Shanghai maths approach
– such as high quality mathematical talk and careful choice of how to represent
maths ideas – that do have evidence for success in England as well as other
countries.
Further afield
If East Asian methods do not import easily because of other factors, then
perhaps politicians should broaden where they look for ideas in maths.
Switzerland, for example, was the top European performer in maths in PISA in
2015 – not far behind East Asian countries.
Canada also did significantly better than England. Though recently, Canadians
have also started worrying about how their performance.
There’s also more that can be learnt from PISA and other international tests. It
seems, for example, that all high-performing education systems
have some common features. These include: supporting teachers with
good pay, conditions and status. Teachers that are given the freedom
to decide what and how to teach with support from researchers but
without political interference, also seems to be another contributing
factor. As does having an emphasis on good outcomes for everyone – not just
the highest performing children – most high performing countries do not
group children by ability from a young age, as often happens in England.
In any case, different tests tell different stories. Another international test
– Trends in Maths and Science study – shows England’s results in maths have
been steadily improving for the past 20 years. Perhaps then, the most important
lesson from England’s mastery experiment is to stop worrying so much
about international league table positions – and for schools to focus on
encouraging all pupils to be the best they can be.