Yahoo News Times tables focus helps boost primary school maths Sats results, experts say
A focus on times tables has helped to boost primary school Maths Sats results, experts have said.
Data released by the Department for Education (DfE) show that 79 per cent of pupils reached the expected standard in Maths this year, the high proportion out of all the “three R’s” and a rise of four percentage points on 2018.
It comes after a drive by ministers to bring back traditional teaching methods such as times tables, as well as efforts to import Chinese-style teaching into the classroom.
More than half a million 11-year-olds across England took national curriculum tests in May, where they were tested in reading, writing and maths as well as science and grammar, punctuation and spelling.
When the Government launched a new "tougher" curriculum four years ago, 70 per cent of pupils reached the expected standard in Maths.
This rose to 75 per cent the following year where it remained in 2018, before rising again to 79 per cent this year. Prof Valsa Koshy, an expert in maths education at Brunel University, said that the Government’s emphasis on times tables “is making a difference” in pupils’ abilities in maths.
She told The Daily Telegraph: “I see in schools there is more emphasis on children learning time tables. If you look at Sats maths papers, there is a lot are problem solving.
“If you have the instant recall of calculations and times tables, your efforts can be used to solve mathematical problems – this is what maths is all about.
“There has been an emphasis much more over the past few years on times tables, and that could all be making a difference.”
Prof Koshy also pointed to the disciplined and structured approach to teaching maths following efforts emulate Chinese teaching methods.
At the time, the DfE set up an exchange programme between English and Shanghai schools, so that primary maths teachers could learn about Chinese teaching methods.
The programme was followed two years later by a £41 million pound project to train thousands of primary schools to adopt the “Shanghai-style”, also known as the “maths mastery approach”.
Maths mastery involves children being taught as a whole class, building depth of understanding of the structure of the subject, and is supported by the use of high-quality textbooks.
A series of maths “hubs” were set up around the country to train teachers in the new methods. Overall, 65 per cent of pupils reached the expected standard in the “three R’s”, up from 64 per cent last year, high 11 per cent reaching the higher standard, up from ten per cent last year.
