Catching up on maths in early years

Children in England are still starting their primary education with considerable differences in their maths skills and those differences continue right through their education. Liz Bayram explores how achieving a strong maths foundation in a child’s early years can make all the difference.

All registered childcare settings in England – nurseries, childminders, nursery schools; pre-schools and childcare on domestic premises – are expected to deliver the Early Years Foundation Stage framework with a clear focus on supporting children’s numeracy and enjoyment of maths from a very early age. The word in enjoyment is key to the approach early years takes in supporting our youngest children to have fun whilst growing their understanding and confidence in numbers.

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      string(3291) "of all, enjoying maths – key to ensuring they can makethe most of their primary maths education. We discovered so many examples of greatpractice – Bottesfords was just one and I want to thank all the nurseries, pre-schoolsand childminders who took time to share their excellent practice for the FEA research.The only way we are going to close the maths gap at age 11 between children frompoor families and their more advantaged peers is through the strong whole approachto maths that is being fostered in these and many other early years settings.With over 90% of early years setting now judged good or outstanding by Ofsted,the skills and capacity to invest in this approach are there. Challenges are aheadincluding the roll out of 30 hours of free childcare from this September but, if we canovercome the sustainability challenges, there is a unique opportunity to tackle this andthe wider attainment gap for many pre-school children.In summary the following are the particular practices, approaches and actionscommon across early years settings who have developed strong mathematical practice:Staff training and Qualifications – There is a focus across the settings on well trainedand knowledgeable staff lead or managed by a teacher or someone with EYTS or EYPS;On going CPD including programmes such as NDNA’s Maths Champion were seen askeyEnvironment – The physical surroundings form an important part of children’s mathsdevelopment, not just numbers and shapes but items arranged on high and low shelfs.Adult/child interaction – settings focused on maximising the adult/child interaction tosupport children in their learning and encourage their independence.Knowing the children well – across all settings teachers and practitioners know thechildren well- their strengths, areas for development and interests.Clear leadership of maths – this is led by proactive maths leads/managers, who arewell qualified with further training in maths education; they know what they ‘don’tknow’, know how to find out and know how to develop staff.Making maths fun – Settings acknowledged the importance of making mathsenjoyable, underpinned by an emphasis on children developing confidence andindependence.Problem solving within a meaningful context – settings regularly and frequentlyfocused on problem -solving within real-life situations.Planning – was carefully thought through in all settings. In some, there was a focus onstaff planning together, which also supported their CPD.Parents – all settings acknowledged the importance of parent engagement inchildren’s learning,Liz Bayram is Chief Executive at Professional Association for Childcare and EarlyYears (PACEY ).Notes1. Early Years Foundation Stage Framework, Department for Education, March 2017.2. Foundations for Quality, The independent review of early education and childcare qualifications,June 2012.3. Early Years Workforce Strategy, Department for Education, March 2017.4. Closing the attainment gap in maths: a study of good practice in early years and primary settings,Dr. Catherine Knowles, Fair Education Alliance, February 2017."
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Inclusion

Catching up on maths in early years

16 Apr 2018

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      string(5661) "What is BBC Bitesize Daily? CEO TLC LiveRecently, the BBC introduced Bitesize Daily, a fourteen-week schedule of educational programmes which the BBC describes as the “biggest push on education in its history”. The ambitious initiative provides video lessons and interactive quizzes guided by the national media corporation’s 98-years of experience and an extensive list of talent. Stars already acting as celebrity ‘substitute teachers’ include Sir David Attenborough, Danny Dyer and Jodie Whittaker.The effort is commendable and has naturally been covered extensively by the media, but it is a supplement, not a substitute. A two-way exchange is fundamental to teaching, and without it, students cannot ask questions or clarify complex topics. Education is an interaction between a teacher and a student, and the BBC’s programmes, no matter how excellent, simply cannot offer this.The mechanisms in place for tracking student understanding face similar limitations. Part of the skill of a good teacher, acquired through years of training and experience, is the ability to identify students who have fallen behind and offer additional support so they can catch up to the class. Bitesize Daily offers a multiple-choice quiz after each day’s teaching, and while it may be able to identify whether the student has retained the information, it offers little recourse or guidance besides ‘try again’ for those who have not understood it.Bitesize Daily has drawn significant attention, but we must not be distracted: it is critical that students have access to educational solutions which offer genuine, two-way human interaction.An alternative for supporting studentsSome students are more disadvantaged than others, and they are falling behind during the pandemic. Many students come from households where parents are unable to provide them with academic support due to their jobs, childcare, and other responsibilities. The Guardian recently reported that while many students are able to study for around six hours every day during lockdown, disadvantaged students average just four and a half.Allowing these students to fall behind is a compounding problem: When a student doesn’t understand a core concept, they don’t understand the subsequent lessons built upon it. Students can quickly fall behind, become frustrated, and lose motivation, and while a good teacher can quickly identify and rectify this, the BBC’s Bitesize Daily – although well-intentioned – cannot. Fortunately, there is a solution for remotely providing students with interactive, oversight-driven education while maintaining social distance: online tutoring.Online tutoring is a cost-effective solution that provides students with the care of a dedicated, qualified professional teacher who can answer their questions and issue corrections, and can tailor lesson plans and assignments to their needs. It is convenient, flexible, and safe, making it ideal for the needs of the UK’s students.How can we provide online tutoring to disadvantaged students? Prior government programmes offer a precedent. The existing policy intended to bridge the attainment gap, the pupil premium, was introduced in 2011, and it provides schools with a lump sum for each student eligible for free lunches.In the early years of the scheme, it largely succeeded in closing the attainment gap, but much of the funding went to inhouse teaching and face to face teaching to provide direct support for disadvantaged students, unfortunately the benefits of online tutoring were not fully appreciated and it only used in a limited way, However, over time the focus on attainment was relaxed, and funding often went to supporting students in other ways.Despite the programme’s loss of focus, its early successes (and the ongoing success of the more narrowly focused Pupil Premium Plus) illustrate the potential for tutoring to support disadvantaged students in catching up to their peers. The Northern Powerhouse Partnership, a coalition of northern MPs, has already called for a £700 per-student ‘catch-up premium’. This is an excellent start, although we fear that this may not be enough to make up for months of lockdown.Drop the stigmaWe must also ask why online tutoring has not already been adopted at scale as a means of supplementing distance teaching. The answer, in large part, is due to an unfortunate stigma against it.Online tutoring isn’t a poor substitute for ‘real,’ in-person tutoring; it’s a valid alternative with a different set of benefits and limitations. Removing the need for the tutors to travel, for instance, ensures that students can find a tutor who suits their learning style, regardless of geographic location as quickly as possible. Similarly, lessons can be held at any point throughout the day, ensuring that both teacher and student feel as comfortable and focused as possible.While teaching remotely, tutors can take advantage of a broad range of engaging digital resources and content, bringing together guidance of teacher-led education and the variety of online learning. In 2018 the Education Endowment Foundation reported that low levels of tutoring could boost struggling pupils’ results in maths by up to three months over a year – that was based on one hour of tuition per week over 12 weeks delivered by graduates.Remote online tutoring is already used to raise the attainment of looked after children and funded by the Pupil Premium Plus. For example, at TLC Live, our qualified teachers delivered more than 24,000 hours of tuition to this group of children last"
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Blogs

BBC’s Bitesize Daily is not the solution to the Covid crisis

3 Jun 2020

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      string(373) "... suggested in spring that theywould strengthen the teaching profession by expandingthe number of teaching schools and by making B theminimum entry requirement in English and maths.They also proposed a ‘curriculum for life’ addressing, forexample, personal finance and sex education, as well asslimming down the National Curriculum core. The lastslimming ..."
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      string(4287) "piece ofself-protection that is the end result of their damagingstand-down on tuition fees after the last election. Theyrecognise that their best possible future is in some sort ofalliance for which they have left themselves negotiatingspace.Nonetheless, the Lib Dems do put education highon their agenda. They suggested in spring that theywould strengthen the teaching profession by expandingthe number of teaching schools and by making B theminimum entry requirement in English and maths.They also proposed a ‘curriculum for life’ addressing, forexample, personal finance and sex education, as well asslimming down the National Curriculum core. The lastslimming-down of the core – to which Lib Dems were aparty – made it even longer than its predecessor. Fingerscrossed for next time!UKIPUKIP have promised to establish a grammar school inevery town, though it’s not clear how this will play inremote and densely urban areas. They propose thatparents should hold 30 per cent of the seats on the23Vol 6.5School Leadership Todaywww.teachingtimes.comCommentPoliticsgoverning body, that reductions in immigration can easepressure on school places, and that all examinations beset by a single examining board.Beyond this, policy is rather thin at the time ofwriting, though there may be further announcements.Past proposals include a vocational apprenticeshipworth four GCSEs, the scrapping of sex education belowthe age of seven, the introduction of school vouchers andthe replacement of Ofsted and LAs with ‘independentbodies’. As part of a Conservative-UKIP alliance, one cansee how education policy would be pushed towards ahandful of specific traditional policies.Green PartyGreen Party policies are eye-catching. The party aimswould move us towards compulsory education forseven to 14-year-olds only, and put an end to testingand benchmarking. At this time, they are specificallyproposing to abolish tests in Key Stage 1 and moveback the start of education to six if parents support it.Spectacularly, the party’s goals include a cap on class sizeat 20 pupils.The Greens favours pushing decisions down to themost local level possible, and will reabsorb academiesand free schools into the LA. It aspires to make earlyyears education free to all and to refocus the Key Stage1 curriculum on play and social skills. The big question ishow all this will be afforded and managed.The devolution factorThe four countries of the UK already have discreteeducation policies and they do manage to combine thiswith a very modest amount of co-operation, for example,in international testing. It would be no bad thing if therewere to be more co-operation and mutual challenge. Wespend many hours gazing enviously at Finland, China andSingapore when we could learn useful lessons from ourimmediate neighbours.Don’t forget that regional parties can influenceUK-wide policies when the government has a narrowmajority. We saw this happen on the tuition fees a fewyears ago. William Hague has proposed an English vetoto stop regional parties making unpalatable decisionsfor their English counterparts, but there is a long way togo to make that workable. Demographics suggest thatsuch a move would make English policies – includingeducation – veer steeply to the right.Not done yetElectioneering through the modern media means thatparties hold back announcements to drip-feed to thepublic as part of an extended campaign. We may not yethave seen all they have to offer. Keep your ears open fornew policies.Sue Hackman is an Education Trainer, Consultant andWriter. She was Chief Adviser on School Standardsat the Department for Education from 2006 to 2013,and has recently teamed up with Imaginative Mindsto publish Climbing Frames, a print and digitalassessment framework to replace the now defunctNational Curriculum levels.Knowledge trails1. Can political interference ever end?– The education of our children is far tooprecious to leave to the yo-yoing of partypolitics. Deputy headteacher Gavin Whitesays it’s time the government left teachersto get on with it.library.teachingtimes.com/articles/canpoliticalhttp://www.climbingframes.org.ukhttp://library.teachingtimes.com/articles/canpoliticalhttp://library.teachingtimes.com/articles/canpolitical"
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Leadership

The election 2015: What do the parties have in store?

11 May 2015

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      string(281) "... Rings film – and I remember feeling despair as the credits came up and my friend said the next one wouldn’t be out for two years. Two years! But I was hooked! The same thing happened when I was younger and I read Stephen King’s Green Mile series. He ..."
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      string(5654) "  Teaching approaches 16 Creative Teaching & Learning n Volume 1.1 T here is a memorable skit in the 80s comedy series Not the Nine O’clock News. Rowan Atkinson’s Bean-esque character is walking down a busy street. He turns and notices the video camera following him from the other side of the road. He smiles and watches it. He is fascinated by it, and starts to play up to it by raising his eyebrows and waving. Then he walks straight into a lamppost. Cue: canned laughter. Atkinson’s character here is fascinated by the camera. We are fascinated by him, and he by us. But we retain the control and the power. It’s a bit like the teacher/student relationship. Catching the attention of learners has become an vital teacher’s skill. Teachers have to move children from what Sir Ken Robinson calls ‘dis-enthrallment’ to a state of engagement. This skill is not naturally engrained in either teachers or learners. In fact, this skill has evolved relatively recently – probably since the abolition of total fear from our classrooms with the disappearance of the cane. We have to work harder to ensure and maintain engagement – so when we start a topic, we need to be, at the very least, interesting. When I was 13 and in year nine, my ancient music teacher kept us quiet by making us draw French horns whilst listening to classical records. Have you ever tried drawing a French horn? Of course, when we had finished it, we got to colour it in. He wasn’t a particularly nice teacher – he could have been an extra from All Creatures Great and Small – but, to be fair, it must have been quite memorable drawing Secondary school teachers know the importance of a good lesson ‘starter’ – one that intrigues the children and pushes them to ask questions. Hywel Roberts explains why ‘lures’ are so important – and how to find good ones. Lured into learning    Teaching approaches 17Volume 1.1 n Creative Teaching & Learning that French horn because I’m sitting here writing about it now, 25 years later. What did it teach me? It taught me that French horns are very difficult to draw. It also taught me that he – the teacher – didn’t really care. So it takes more than just a challenge to rein learners in. The French horn didn’t have a point and, as we sat there sharpening yellow pencils in silence, we had no investment other than to get the job done or we’d be in real bother. Thinking about it, it would have been great if the teacher had turned up with a real French horn we could look at. And if he played it, well, who knows how exciting that could have been? I know I would have been hooked because I love music. He didn’t know that, though, because he’d never bothered to find out. Can you remember being enthralled by something? It might be a book you’ve read or a film you’ve seen. The reason we sit through the movie or keep turning the page is because we’ve been lured in. I really loved the first Lord of the Rings film – and I remember feeling despair as the credits came up and my friend said the next one wouldn’t be out for two years. Two years! But I was hooked! The same thing happened when I was younger and I read Stephen King’s Green Mile series. He released one a month for six months. Did you know he’d done that to his readership – lured them in? It’s a good way of selling ideas – including paperbacks. It’s the same in a classroom. You have to ask questions first – to get the students to start their own thinking, and engage with what’s exciting in the topic. Classroom decor An old colleague of mine, a terrific maths teacher, enthralled his students by putting a poster of then pop-phenomenon the Spice Girls on his classroom wall with a sign reading: “The Spice Girls got their GCSE maths”. He also put a picture of Yoda saying “Learn you will” up. It caused a scene in the department, but everyone wanted to be in his class. The Spice Girls retired early from the wall when a senior staff member labelled the poster sexist. I can’t remember if Yoda was allowed to stay up. But just with those silly pictures, he had deformalised the classroom. This freed the students to think for themselves. It also attached a level of the heroic to the subject – after all, if the Spice Girls and Yoda like maths, it must be valuable. That’s the lure – the students have to ask why maths helped them climb the pop charts and achieve Jedi powers? If you’re lucky enough to have your own classroom, make sure it reflects your philosophy. I worked with an NQT who was really struggling in his classroom. When I met him I could see the problem immediately. Teachers shouldn’t be expected to paint and polyfilla their own classrooms – but I do think you’ve got to take ownership. The teacher had done nothing. If you can imagine a cold, run down classroom with a frightened teacher at the front, you’re seeing it. It was depressing and lacked any spark of colour, imagination or life. The teacher stuck up quotes from his favourite books and films and clip art. The children reacted positively. The displays became talking points. Suddenly, the young people were offering their own quotes – and the space was co-constructed into something special. This enabled him to get on with the core business of teaching and learning. Using a lure Those of us familiar with Mantle of the Expert and ‘teacher in role’ will know how important a fascinating lure is. The attraction of working within contexts can establish powerful hooks into learning. Telling"
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Creative Teaching & Learning

Lured into learning

5 Apr 2010

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