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Reform of Mathematical Education in Primary Schools: the Experiment in Barking & Dagenham

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 March 2020

S.J. Prais
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Abstract

Experimental reforms in the teaching of mathematics incorporating Continental teaching methods were begun in January 1995 in fifteen classes in six primary schools in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham. The classes were visited in June 1996 by the Secretary of State for Education Mrs Gillian Shephard, by HM Chief Inspector of Schools Mr Chris Woodhead, and by the Opposition spokesman for education Mr David Blunkett; the media, including the BBC television programme, Panorama, provided accounts for the wider public. The reforms resulted from a wider research programme—comparing Continental and British productivity, education and vocational training—that has been under way at the National Institute for over a decade, by a research team led by SJ Prais; in recent years the research has benefited from close co-operation with the inspectorate and schools in Barking and Dagenham; this phase was funded by the Gatsby Charitable Foundation, to the Trustees of which—and especially Mr David Sainsbury for his personal encouragement—the Institute is much indebted. The commentary below outlines the background to these educational reforms, explains what has been done so far, and sets out for discussion some proposed next steps.

Type
Commentary
Information
National Institute Economic Review , Volume 157 , July 1996 , pp. 3 - 8
Copyright
Copyright © 1996 National Institute of Economic and Social Research

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Footnotes

∗

This Note has been prepared in response to the Editorial Board's invitation to provide a personal commentary on developments in the Barking and Dagenham project. Whilst remaining responsible for errors and misinterpretations, I should like to thank all concerned for their co-operation at Barking and Dagenham-particularly Mr Roger Luxton (Principal Inspector) and Mr Graham Last (Senior Inspector, Primary); on the Continent, I wish particularly to thank Professor Aunn (Freiburg i. B.));; Professor HJ Streiff (Head of the Teacher Training College, Zürich, when we made our first visits there) and Swiss Federal and Cantonal educational authorities.

References

Notes

(1) In 1981 the Institute's study Productivity and Industrial Structure (by SJ Prais in collaboration with A Daly, DT Jones and K Wagner; Cambridge UP) compared Britain with Germany and the United States; the gap in vocational training formed the subject of ch. 4, and the need to use it, was one of the main ‘lessons' drawn in the final chapter 19. A series of subsequent comparative investigations of particular manufacturing industries and of one service sector (hotels) were surveyed in Productivity, Education and Training (by SJ Prais, Cambridge UP,1995); the detailed underlying investigations were issued in two supplementary volumes of reprints (vol. 1,1990; vol. 2,1995; available from the Institute). A more detailed analysis of the transition From School to Productive Work: Britain and Switzerland Compared is in press (CUP, end 1996).

(2) Details are in ch. 4 of my 1995 book, Productivity, Education and Training; see also my paper, Improving school mathematics in practice, in Proceedings of a Seminar on Mathematics Education (Gatsby Charitable Foundation, London, November 1995), esp. pp. 5-6, nn. 12 and 14 on historical aspects; and p. 7, n. 17 on current difficulties on English primary teaching. On the difficulties associated with the teaching styles that have become current in English schools, see the well-known official report by R Alexander, J Rose and C Woodhead, Curriculum Organisation and Classroom Practice in Primary Schools (DES, 1992); and two valuable books published in the past year: R Alexander et al., Versions of Primary Education (Routledge, 1995), esp. ch. 6; and P Croll and N Hastings (eds), Effective Primary Teaching: Research-based Classroom Strategies (Fulton, 1996).

(3) AG Howson (chairman of a working party of the London Mathematical Society, The Institute of Mathematics and its Application, and the Royal Statistical Society), Tackling the Mathematics Problem (London Mathematics Society, October 1995).

(4) The International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) carried out mathematical tests in 1964, 1981 and (results still awaited) in March 1995; a dozen countries participated in the first round, rising to about 45 in the latest round. Attainments in other subjects were tested by the IEA in intervening years. A less detailed study of pupils' attainments in mathematics and science was carried out by the US-based International Assessment of Educational Prqgress (IAEP) in 1990-91 covering some twenty countries (a preliminary ‘feasibility’ study was carried out by the IAEP in 1988 in six countries; Spain was the only European participant apart from the UK). In all these surveys, usually 1-3000 pupils at each age in each country were given the same tests, each test lasting one school-period (about 45-minutes; in mathematical tests no calculators were permitted).

(5) Robin Alexander, Other primary schools and ours: hazards of international comparison. Delivered at the University of Warwick on 18 June 1996 (available as an Occasional Paper from the Centre for Research in Elementary and Primary Education, U. Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL).

(6) On precision of expression, cf. also the Swiss emphasis in the teaching of practical subjects on clean working, precision, perseverance, reliability and responsibility (often put under the umbrella term of Arbeitscharakter or ‘good work habits’; see p. 91 of my Productivity, Education and Training).

(7) p. 22.

(8) H Bierhoff, Laying the Foundations of Numeracy (National Institute Discussion Paper no. 90, January 1996), pp. 42-3. The finer gradation is illustrated in that study in relation to learning to add two-digit numbers, such as 56 + 37, which advances from the simpler 50 + 30 in six distinct intermediate steps (ibid. p. 27). English texts tend not to distinguish as many intermediate steps, and provide fewer consolidation exercises after each step.

(9) Children born pre-term present a particularly clear anomaly in relation to our current school-entry requirements based on birth within a precise twelve-months period: a child born, for example, two weeks' pre-term and just before the critical date determining the required year of school-entry, enters a year earlier than a child born at full term two weeks later; the former child is more likely to have problems in keeping pace with his class because of his early entry, and those problems often persist. Twins born either side of midnight of the determining date were recently reported as being directed by the local educational authority to enter school in successive years. In that case, an appeal led to a sensible solution; but anything less extreme leads to the literal application of the birthday rule irrespective of a child's state of development.

(10) Ofsted, Class-size and the Quality of Education (1995), p. 41. Present support staff often do not have the qualified status legally permitting them to take charge of children outside the surveillance of a qualified class-teacher; this anomaly is one that deserves addressing from many points of view (including whether a child with SEN is being properly catered for even under present arrangements; see next sub-section).

(11) These issues are discussed further in App. C of our forthcoming book (1996) on transition from school to work in Switzerland and England.