Tuesday 2 February 2021

My two cents on the student achievement "failure" in maths and science

On Tuesday morning I was awoken at the beach by the dulcet tones of forestry workers cutting down trees at 4:30am, so my Tuesday doomscrolling started quite early. 

The first thing I came across after 6:00am was an article on RNZ about the Principals Federation writing a letter to the Secretary of Education, Iona Holsted, at the Ministery of Education entitled Principals challenge Education Ministry over student failure. 

The Principals Federation says achievement in maths and science in particular should be ringing alarm bells and schools need more direction on what they should be teaching and the best ways to teach it. 
In a letter to the secretary for education, Iona Holsted, the federation's president, Perry Rush, said New Zealand's falling scores had not provoked an urgent response and the lack of "thought leadership" was a serious weakness. 
Holsted responded with a letter that said the Ministry of Education (MOE) was already working on the problems the federation raised and schools already had the ability, and the funding for teacher training, to change how they taught. 

You can hear Perry Rush of the Principals Federation speak to Corin Dann on Morning Report on Tuesday 2 February here and you can hear the response from Pauline Cleaver from the Ministry of Education on Morning Report here.

This follows on from the release of the latest results from the TIMMS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) in December (see here) where Scores for New Zealand nine and 13-year-olds fell in both maths and science in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, with the 13-year-olds recording their worst results ever - 482 for maths and 499 for science.

Before that, in late November, the latest data from the National Monitoring Study of Student Achievement (NMSSA) run by the University of Otago and the Council for Educational Research shows there has been no real increase in achievement in reading, writing and mathematics since the study started in 2012 and that Year 4 boys in high decile schools were doing worse in writing than previously.  Read more here.

Naturally, this is right up my alley and I have a lot of thoughts on this.  And I immediately set about tweeting about this and sharing with my teaching colleagues on Facebook.
This was my follow up tweet to John Gerritson, the reporter on the education beat for RNZ.

I followed that tweet up with the following:  I believe that Y1-6 teachers should do proper unit studies on butterfly life cycles, floating and sinking, kitchen chemistry and the like in science, as well as in social studies, health & technology. Give kids knowledge to hang further inquiry on.

By doing this we teach kids basic scientific knowledge and processes. We better guide questioning and help them build the inquiry skills they are more capable to use from Y7, with knowledge and experience. We could even start guiding Y5/6 kids in term 4 with their own mini-inquiries for something they learned during the year they want to extend on. (Apparently, according to someone on Facebook, this is how IB do it. So I guess someone researched what I figured out from experience).

And these statements will upset the apple cart. I've been saying it at my school for the last few months.

And then I found out there was another article in the New Zealand Herald, behind the paywall, so, on my drive home from the beach, I had to go buy a hardcopy newspaper to read it. From now on I have copied my tweets I made as I read the newspaper and I will use those tweets to flesh out some more thoughts in this blog post.

I have so many thoughts on this and the first ones are: Anne Tolley and Hekia Parata have a lot to answer for with: 
* National Standards being inflicted on children 
* killing the Teacher Advisory Service in 2009 
* killing the PLD in Literacy and Numeracy in 2009.



As seen in the picture above, 45% of children who were tested in Maths at Y8 are achieving at the expected curriculum level in maths in 2018 and only 20% achieved the expected level in science in 2017.  These children in 2018 started school in 2009/2010, meaning most of their primary school years were blighted with National Standards, little access to meaning maths PLD for their teachers, and a narrowing of the curriculum, meaning science fell off the radar as many schools focused in on reading, writing and maths.  Science advisors ceased to exist along with the Teacher Advisory service at the end of 2009, so there's you answer to why Y8 kids in 2017 were achieving so bloody poorly at science. I have all the swear words in my head directed at Anne Tolley, the Minister of Education at the time, killing the Teacher Advisory Service - again. But more on that later.

This is where I make my first defense of the much derided and maligned Numeracy Project: And to all those people who slag off the Numeracy Project: I was a shit mathematician and an average maths teacher before I went through the Numeracy Project training. All the blocks clicked into place once I did it and I believe I'm a better teacher of maths as a result.

In response, on page 4: The ministry's deputy secretary of early learning and student achievement, Ellen MacGregor-Reid, said the ministry was concerned about "the pattern of decline" in achievement and was considering "specific actions need in particular areas of learning including social-emotional, literacy and mathematics".

"A priority for us this year is developing a maths strategic plan.

"We will be working with the sector this year to develop a high-level plan to support a systems approach to shifting the dial in mathematics.  This will identify and address the current issues impacting on mathematics teaching and learning, so there is sustained improvement.

"We are currently building a strong evidence base to support this work.  We have commissioned a Royal Society Te Aparangi convened independent papter on the mathematics knowledge and skills learners need to know, and when, and what needs to be changed in the NZ Curriculum to achieve this.

"We will also be establishing a diverse group of sector practitioners to critique outcomes evidence, including TIMSS and NMSSA data to help us understand and respond to practice and implementation challenges."

So this is where I turn my attention to the make up for the Royal Society Te Aparangi.




My concern is there is a lot of representation from the Universities of Auckland, Massey, Victoria and Canterbury - yet there is none from the University of Waikato nor the University of Otago.  I wonder why this is?  Is it because the Numeracy Project emerged from Waikato?  Is it because NMSSA is administered via Otago?

Also, what does "We will be establishing a divers group of sector practitioners" look like and how will this happen?

Today I had a chance to read past page 4 of yesterday's NZ Herald I bought and I found even more on pages 8 and 9. So I went down the rabbit hole again.



It starts off outlining the problem, what's going wrong & then what can we do. Associate Professor Jodie Hunter, co-director of Massey University's Centre for Research in Mathematics Education, and Dr Gillian Frankcom-Burgess, NZ Association of Maths Teachers president and lecturer at the Faculty of Education at University of Auckland, give expert comment in this article. Perry Rush is frequently quoted with his concerns. Massey University Distinguished Professor Gaven Martin, as the chair of the Royal Society is quoted, as is the ministry's chief scientific advisor, Professor Stuart McNaughton.

Firstly I was taken by the graphic down the right hand side of page 9.  There were a lot of downward arrows that are concerning.



The graphic to the right of the article struck me first. It looks at the latest TIMSS (Trends in International Maths & Science Study) results for Y9s (aged 13/14).
This top part shows where NZ is compared to Singapore, Japan, Australia, England & the US. And we're behind!!! We are usually ahead of Australia, England and the US, and this is our strong argument against a nationwide standardised assessment programme.



The middle graph looks at each strand: * statistics * number * geometry * algebra
(Where is measurement?)
We are trending down in all of these. Why? While statistics and number appear to be the strength of New Zealand students, it is of great concern that even these are dramatically trending downwards.



The bottom of the graphic looks at the kind of learning: * reasoning * applying * knowing
Knowing has had the most dramatic fall.
The Numeracy Project tackles all of these - but I don't think the Numeracy Project, despite its official status, is understood by many newer teachers.

So this photo below sums up the problem. Our Y9s a strongest in statistics & number, but even that's declining, and while reasoning (or explaining why/how they worked it out) is strong, that's declining. Concerning is their ability to apply a known strategy to different problems and their ability to "just know" certain things is declining too - the knowing in particular.

The knowing means things like knowing your times tables, that 4+b=10 is b=6, or if 4+6=10 then 40+60=100 & 400+600=1000 and so forth, that half is 1/2 or 50% or 0.5.



So how did we get it wrong?
Back in 1989, when Tomorrow's Schools was introduced, the curriculum advisory service within the Department of Education was disbanded when the Ministry of Education was formed. The Teacher Advisory Service came into being, hosted by universities and Teacher Training Colleges, which became Schools of Education within universities (now known as Facilities of Education).
National got rid of Teacher Advisory Services in the 90s, the Clark Labour government revived them in 2000 for Key's National government to kill them in 2009 again.

Consequently, since 2009, private providers have had to fill the gap and that could be practically anyone. Funding is contestable and smaller schools are at a greater disadvantage. Even in bigger schools, if you're not buddy buddy with the right SMT (senior management team) member you could miss out.



Which is the right way for principals, as senior leaders of curriculum and learning, to go?
Perry Rush, from the Principals Federation, outlines the confusion below. There are so many options. Rush notes many principals have rejected the Numeracy Project because "it confused students by giving them multiple ways to solve every problem" but declares there is no alternative.

Here comes a personal opinion here. I've already stated that the Numeracy Project was a revelation for me personally as a person who struggled with maths all through my own school years. What the Numeracy Project did for me was helped me understand place value and see the patterns. No longer was I reliant on a pen and paper to do an algorithm, I now had the ability to image the numbers in my head, compensate and create tidy tens - all language I never had until I did the Numeracy Project training in 2005.

Then is 2016, during my year of doing Masters papers, I met one of the original developers of the Numeracy Project. She told me it was never meant to be the silver bullet be-all-and-end-all of how to do maths replacing all the other ways of doing maths. It was meant to build teacher capability and confidence and be another tool in their kete.

So, naturally, back in the day, someone in the MOE must "have known better" and it was rolled out as the "must do" in the 2000s. Oh dear.
Personally, I think kiwi teachers, rather than looking to Singapore or Australia for overseas products to teach maths, should be looking at resources from New Zealand sources, like Caxton Educational, based on the NZ Curriculum.



Now the good news is that we are doing maths for similar time lengths as other countries.

And I was happy about that, until I read the highlighted portion. WTF???



Why is maths not happening in some classes? Is there other things crowding it out? Teacher confidence? Poor organisation? Lost in other exciting work? If you have a student teacher in your class, you need to be modelling best practice of teaching and I am alarmed if a student teacher is in a class for a week, and it is a fairly calm, normal week for a school, yet there is no maths actually happening.

Ability grouping is big in NZ. I personally refuse to do it in writing because I conference with every child and prefer and individualised process. I find it essential for most guided reading activities, but when they are not in their guided reading groups with me, the children are in mixed ability groups or independently doing other literacy tasks. I do ability group for a significant portion of my number and some of my algebra learning in maths - but I see no need in statistics, geometry or measurement to do so.



The concern that some kids don't get exposed to higher-level maths and specific concepts like fractions caused me to make changes in my programme a few years ago. So I introduced Maths Talk, where I have different problems everyday to start and warm us up each day. We see lots of ways to solve the same problem. I also use this time to introduce concepts like fractions or how to use a ruler to measure.

Also, every day my class looks at the MetService three times. We may see at 9:00am the temperature is 15.6°C, but the expected high is 23°C. So we work out the difference between the two numbers (7.4°C) which brings in maths concepts like decimals, rounding, tidy tens - a lot of place value. As the last year went on, we began doing it in te reo Māori as well, so the kids have a bilingual choice.

There are ways of introducing maths into many of your daily routines in your class.

The head of the Royal Society expert panel, Distinguished Professor Gaven Martin, says, "Our feeling was that the basic curriculum was good, so the real disjunct is what is promised from it and what is being delivered against it. That is a big issue."



Yes and No.

Yes, our New Zealand Curriculum has a lot of freedom to tailor to your local needs and community.
No, there's some wishy washy stiff to tighten. Do we really need such freedom in maths? Shouldn't maths be tighter with its objectives to be learnt?

I think the big issue is do teachers know the curriculum? Do they feel confident to be inspired by the curriculum and know how to teach the curriculum? Do they have the resources and support to do so? Have they received ongoing PLD to inspire, remind and consolidate their ability to teach maths?

And my answer is no to many of these questions.

In my observations, since National Standards was made non-compulsory at the end of 2017, many teachers did not know the curriculum because they based everything on National Standards. They didn't know where kids should be without National Standards. They didn't know they could assess students against objectives in the curriculum and at the curriculum levels. They looked for a replacement - sadly many have turn to PaCT and now base everything they do around that. PaCT is not a curriculum, it is an assessment tool!!!!!!!!!!

I see so many teachers also asking in NZ Teachers for units and resources rather than planning their own, or buying a ready-made one on Teachers Pay Teachers. It's almost like the growth of the internet and the National Standards years have taken all the creativity out of being a teacher and planning for your class.

I was so concerned about this, I wrote a blog post about it on my teaching blog in January 2018, For those who are crying: "How will I plan and assess without National Standards?" here is some inspiration. Feel free to check out some old school teachering.

Also, since National Standards came in, many old school principals have retired and the number of principals who have only known the years of accountability in education or have only taught under the shadow of National Standards is increasing. How can they lead their staff in unpacking the New Zealand Curriculum if they are clouded by the Standards still?

In 2017 I said this directly to Chris Hipkins and Tracey Martin (former Associate Minister of Education), and I said it again to their faces in 2018. I told them that PLD in the curriculum was vital. Hmmm. Too little happened.

The idea of hiring specialist teachers of math for upper primary and intermediate schools by Professor Stuart McNaughton, the MOE's chief scientific advisor, is ridiculous considering high schools are struggling to find staff, with actual maths teaching qualifications, to fill mathematic teacher vacancies. This is the sort of useless thinking that sets the MOE up for ridicule from the education sector over and over and shows that they are too far removed from the chalk board and the practicalities of classroom teaching and running a school.



Perry Rush and Dr Frankcom-Burgess are right in their assertion that every primary and intermediate teacher should be able to teach maths. Just because you don't like a subject or it is not your strength doesn't mean you do not get to teach it. You ask for help to get upskilled and grow your confidence. I have the same argument about teaching swimming, but that's for another ranting thread another day.

I look at what Associate Professor Hunter & Dr Frankcom-Burgess say in this photo below and I feel completely vindicated!!! I say this to my class all the time, that maths is about patterns and using what you know about smaller numbers to apply to bigger numbers.
It was the Numeracy Project that opened my eyes to THIS.
The Numeracy Project can boost a maths timid teacher's abilities!!



Yesterday I tweeted Chris Hipkins and Jan Tinetti (Associate Minister of Education) to ask where our promised new Teacher Advisory Service is.

No reply.
So it is heartening to see the "Curriculum Centre" with regional subject advisors in the proposed Education Support Agency is getting off the ground finally. Thanks to the NZ Herald for pointing that out.



The "refresh" of the NZ Curriculum is starting, beginning with introducing the Aotearoa NZ Histories curriculum, released today coincidentally for consultation, which I'm so looking forward to seeing how they resource this for Y4 & below - I'm available to consult on this MOE.

As much as I love the freedom of the NZC, in 2005/2006 when consultation happened, I expressed my concern over it being too vague. I was greatly concerned that knowledge was being sidelined by inquiry, and I think my concern in the last 15 years has been borne out. Why? I was really concerned we would be creating future adults who knew nothing, who had nothing to initiate a conversation or be able to participate in a conversation, who would be unable to enjoy the fun of being in a pub quiz team, people who could only talk shopping and gaming.

Initially my concern was for a lack of knowledge teaching was for science, social studies, health and technology, but now it extends into maths.
How can children inquire and ask questions if they have no knowledge base to ignite from? Too many teachers have included maths in their inquiry units, rather than explicitly teaching the foundations of maths. They are missing out on igniting the passion of a future potential mathematician, revealing the patterns maths has and how they are reflected in nature and music and art and dance - even the Arts link into maths!!!

Today there have been calls from science teachers that science needs just as much attention as maths to improve achievement outcomes, but the issues with maths are over shadowing it. You can read this RNZ article Science educators raise concerns while the Ministry of Education focuses on maths results.

Science educator House of Science chief executive Chris Duggan said there were too few specialist primary school science teachers, and not enough resources.

An Education Review Office report showed 73 percent of primary schools did not have an effective science programme, she said.

"Walk into most primary schools in the country and ask to see their science resources and there'll be one little bookshelf dedicated to science stuff which will usually consist of a box of random magnets, some electronic stuff and maybe some broken glassware.

"And nobody uses it because they don't know what to do with it."

She is not wrong. Science has become a poor cousin in the curriculum budget. Not only has this been driven by the narrowing of the curriculum thanks to the introduction of National Standards, but I am going to point out that former Prime Minister Sir Bill English, when he was the Minister of Finance, closed down Learning Media and that has had consequences. Learning Media used to produce resources across the curriculum subjects, including wonderful provocation for science in a long running series. Now we don't get anything like that unless we buy it from a publisher and it is expensive.

We are missing fabulous resources for the Arts, health, social studies, maths and physical education as a result of Sir Bill's lack of vision and understanding of the long term impact of his financially driven decision.

Inconclusion, this situation has come to a head, and at all levels, government, MOE, academic, kahui ako, school, individual teacher, we all need to look at how we do things. We should not throw the baby out with the bath water, but maybe we relook at how we use what we have better to grow teachers so they can improve their practice.

Writing this today, has allowed me to reflect on my own practice and ask some hard questions of myself as a teacher. I want to contribute to making achieving in maths great again.

How about you?
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Location: Waikato, New Zealand
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