{"id":41785,"date":"2017-12-15T11:37:09","date_gmt":"2017-12-15T19:37:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/world.edu\/?p=41785"},"modified":"2017-12-15T11:37:09","modified_gmt":"2017-12-15T19:37:09","slug":"maths-challenge-england-one-biggest-gaps-high-low-performing-pupils-developed-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/maths-challenge-england-one-biggest-gaps-high-low-performing-pupils-developed-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Maths challenge: England has one of the biggest gaps between high and low performing pupils in the developed world"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nWhen it comes to maths, many primary school children in the UK are struggling to achieve their potential,\u00a0according to new research<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The recent report<\/a>\u00a0from the\u00a0Education Policy Institute<\/a>\u00a0and UCL\u2019s Institute of Education shows that England has one of the biggest gaps between high and low performing students in the developed world. Only New Zealand and Turkey have a bigger disparity.<\/p>\n

So while England\u2019s top performing maths pupils achieve a very high standard, the bottom performers lag far behind \u2013 with this gap well established before pupils reach secondary school.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not surprising then that \u201cmastery\u201d has become something of a buzzword in the UK in the last five years.\u00a0It\u2019s a word with lots of different meanings<\/a>, but it\u2019s usually linked to how mathematics is taught in East Asia \u2013 particularly in Shanghai and Singapore. Both of which are very successful in\u00a0international league tables such as PISA<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In Shanghai and Singapore the mastery method involves whole class\u00a0interactive teaching as the main approach<\/a>. The idea is that by using teacher questions, step by step progression, diagrams and carefully designed practice exercises, all pupils progress together. And daily intervention is also used to support those pupils who need extra tuition.<\/p>\n

The maths gap<\/strong><\/p>\n

Interest in adopting East Asian approaches to maths have recently been made an educational priority by the UK government. In the recent budget, the chancellor Philip Hammond announced\u00a0plans to invest \u00a327m in the expansion<\/a>\u00a0of the Teaching for Mastery maths programme to a further 3,000 schools.<\/p>\n

The government has previously issued funding for a teacher exchange with Shanghai along with a whole raft of other measures to boost the uptake of the mastery approach to British schools. As part of my research, colleagues and I have been\u00a0evaluating the teacher exchange programme with Shanghai<\/a>.<\/p>\n

We discovered after the initial exchange, responses were quite varied in the 48 schools that sent and hosted teachers in 2014 and 2015. Some teachers decided the method wasn\u2019t for them, others adopted some practices, while some completely changed their teaching methods.
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