Sadly true…..decades of educational decline……

What kids at eton can or cannot do is a complete irrelevance.

Most of Eton’s 1300 students enter the school at age 13. An old system under which boys could be registered at birth with a future house master was abolished some years ago, and virtually all candidates now go through a pre-assessment at age 11 (during year 6 in UK educational terms). The assessment consists of an interview, a reasoning test and a report from the boy’s current school

So can you provide the year that everyone at age 11 had good grammar and could all recite times tables?

My thoughts…based only on reading the original link.

Last year my school got good Maths results at the end of Key Stage 2. Similar results for the last few years. My maths leader is great, pupils make great progress, the subject is well taught and organised. We are currently supporting two other schools. Following the logic of today’s pronouncement we are in trouble… Because we happily teach some children who have additional and/ or special needs. Their progress and learning just don’t pass muster against this standard.

I have no problem with the aspiration, or the drive to raise standards. I do have problem with unobtainable targets with ill thought out consequences.

Year? Many years….not long since such aspirations were for 8 year olds. Nothing surprising in any of this for 11 year olds unless your expectations are very low.

Pupils are often 12 when they sit the exams that I linked too. So one year later. Why should we accept such low achievement levels in general. Absurd.

It never did me any harm

It’s not that high a target. I just asked my 6yr old son if he could recite times tables, he got bored at 14 and doing them in a third language. 😉

My take on this, rightly or wrongly, is that once the kids know their times tables inside out then it becomes easier for them to concentrate on the principles behind new learning- they no longer have to spend time working out simple multiplication, addition, subtraction, and division- the answers are ingrained, and they can focus on what is being taught, rather than being distracted by simple calculations.

Son, year 3, has done his times tables, and is now consigned to the ‘torture test’, the earlier mentioned 5 minutes to fill in a grid, though his is a 9 by 9 set of problems, not the 12 x 12 thankfully.

Year? Many years

Which ones?

28 October 1995 – precise enough?

Its precise but is it accurate? What is your evidence?

Of course not.

Just got this in my inbox.
The building of a European Union language!
____________________________________________________________________

The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility.

As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5-year phase-in plan that would become known as “Euro-English”.

In the first year, “s” will replace the soft “c”.. Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard “c” will be dropped in favour of “k”. This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome “ph” will be replaced with “f”. This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible.

Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling.

Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent “e” in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away.

By the 4th yer peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing “th” with “z” and “w” with “v”.

During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary “o” kan be dropd from vords kontaining “ou” and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensi bl riten styl.

Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi TU understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru.

Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas.

😆

So your assertion that literacy and numaracy have got worse is false.

At school we all had to learn our 12 times table by the end of year 3 (6-7 year old). I was in a group of 3 or 4 to be the first in the year to do so and got a bag of crisps for my trouble. I then had to learn the 16 times table while the rest of the year caught up!

Maybe the free school milk back then helped 🙂

Not at all – any scientist would get that – I am just not narrowing that down to an individual year. I am not commented on actual trends merely the expectation or lack of them in this case.

They will stop requiring reading round the subject next 😉 but that’s a little older, isn’t it!!!

Primary education now is streets ahead of where it was in the 80s, when I went through it…

I still struggle with instant recall of multiplication facts in the 6x, 7x, 8x section of the 12×12 grid, but manage to teach GCSE maths and A-level physics 🙂

The proposals, as I understand them via Twitter this morning, are that heads will be fired if 100% of their Y6 kids don’t pass the multiplication tests. That’s just ridiculous.

Oh so expectations used to be higher whilst attainment was lower and that was good in thm world?

Oh dear, is it really that much of a struggle??

Never mind. It’s not even a story unless you have crap expectations. Pretty simple really.

Oh dear, is it really that much of a struggle??

Talking to you is always a struggle

A typical conversation with thm

The minister is just stating what people took for granted just a few years ago

When was this when everyone could do this?
Not in the last 10 years for sure.

Sadly true…..decades of educational decline……

Thm you really are missing the point here.

Well I guess when the prospective candidate comes a knocking and asking for my vote he or she will need to answer a simple multiplication question first 😀

only as long as you know he answer 🙂

Thm you really are missing the point here.

I know, here I am thinking that there is nothing unusual about expecting 11 year olds to know their times tables and to be able to write using vocab, grammar and punctuation. Shocking….

Still tennis in the snow sharpened the mind since. Perhaps I might get the point now.

Isn’t the point that ALL kids know the times tables, not just the ones sitting university entrance exams when they’re eight, i.e. NOT LEAVING THE NEGLECTED BEHIND.

I guess it’s not as funny scoffing at the mongtards though eh THM?

Who’s scoffing?

What is a mongtard? Never heard the expression…

Point 1

I know, here I am thinking that there is nothing unusual about expecting 11 year olds to know their times tables and to be able to write using vocab, grammar and punctuation. Shocking….

You

Point 2

pejorative colloquialism aimed at those of lesser intellectual/academic prowess, derived from Mongol and Retard. Of course if you were that bright I wouldn’t have to point it out to you.

That’s not scoffing it’s simply hoping, as others have said, nothing unusual to expect 11 yr olds to achieve this standard. Sad that teachers think that this is beyond ALL kids – it shouldn’t be.

Maybe I am the delightfully named mongtard – charming expression?!?! Sorry to be quite so stupid. But would prefer that insult to mongtard – that really is very unpleasant and unworthy.

teamhurtmore – Member

The minister is just stating what people took for granted just a few years ago

Doesn’t actually mean it’s any good, though. It’s more valuable to learn how to “scratch count” than it is to rote learn. If you’re asked most of my class what 12×13 was, they’d have been boned but hey, they achieved the tickbox for memorising-without-comprehending.

In all honesty I think we overvalue mental arithmetic and paper arithmetic these days, it’s useful when handling small numbers and restaurant bills but really it’s something that always-available technology does very well. So it becomes a question of the opportunity cost, what could we teach kids instead.

THM – I think it is a bit unfair to post the Eton scholarship paper as indicative what what 12/13 year olds can aspire to – it is an outlier as it is an incredibly competitive field and the guys who get them are both exceptionally bright and well coached.

Not really. Everyone can aim high. Of course, the Eton paper is on a different level. But the gap should never be THAT large. That’s a crime. And teachers should be ashamed if they accept that IMO.

They did not accept it a few years sorry decades ago, why now?!?

Excuse me if I do not consider those ideals as being lofty. But I don’t. They should be standards for all. The minister is correct IMO. Simple.

You say that and I understand the sentiment but it can be very difficult to maintain the interest of individuals coached to scholarship level when faced with two to three years of unfulfilling drudgery to GCSE.

EDIT: I agree the minister’s suggestions don’t seem particularly ambitious.

I know, I have experienced this at first hand. GSCEs are a lower standards than many scholarship papers but that is another story. Seems we are on the same page.

They did not accept it a few years sorry decades ago, why now?!?

I know THM back in the heartbeat epoch there were no such things as innumeracy or illiteracy. 😐

Well at least it wasn’t accepted.

But each to their own. No wonder the gaps exist….anyway I am out.

here I am thinking that there is nothing unusual about expecting 11 year olds to know their times tables and to be able to write using vocab, grammar and punctuation.

Unfortunately nor is there anything unusual in you being asked to support your view with facts or evidence and you just repeating your view, which some, oddly, find condescending.

Here it is again

They did not accept it a few years sorry decades ago, why now?!?

If you keep saying it we will keep asking for you to provide evidence to support your claim. I am at a loss as to why you dont even try nor why you just repeat it. To do this whilst lamenting the standards achieved by the education system is the awzomes,

Literacy and numeracy was rife in the past it has improved massively. Those Eton papers are a complete irrelevance when it comes to improving the literacy of those with illiterate patents with massive social wefare problems. I have seen this first hand have you. Expectations can help this people but what they really need are real changes to the educational system not saying heads will be sacked if these kids dont improve, why would any good teacher want to work in these schools they struggle with recruiting good people anyway.

again more noble intentions but not actual substance beyond more of the same

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-31087137

All I can say about this is that my friends who are teachers have spent the last 4 saying that the Conservative education policies are indicative of people who have have no idea what they are talking about riding roughshod over the input of teachers in the name of political point scoring with their equally opinionated and ill-informed core voters.

Why do we have MPs who have little or no experience in their brief/fields design policies?

Same reason we commission reports from experts and then declare them unsatisfactory, I guess…. (EG drugs policy).

It’s no wonder people are fed up, unaccountable, unrepresentative, ill-informed liers with no idea what they are doing. We wouldn’t accept this amateurism from a bike mechanic, why do we accept it from it politicians?