On Sunday, National Ministers announced a policy dubbed “Make it Count” to boost maths education.
Analysis by Derek Cheng
Derek Cheng is a Multimedia Journalist for New Zealand’s Herald. He values holding those in power to account and shining a light on issues kept in the dark.
The basis for this comment was the achievement data in the latest Curriculum Insights andProgress Study (CIPS): 22% of Year 8 students in New Zealand reached the benchmark for mathematics, 15% were less than a year behind, and 63% were more than one year behind. Among Māori students, only 12% were where they should be, 10% were less than a year behind, and 77% were more than a year behind.
This translates to about 50,000 Year 8 students below the benchmark in 2023.
Is Luxon being misleading?
Two lecturers in maths education, David Pomeroy and Lisa Darragh, say it’s misleading to suggest things are getting worse. Luxon did not provide adequate context, including that the CIPS’ data was based on a new draft curriculum, with a higher benchmark compared to previous years.
“They show a change in curriculum and a new benchmarking process introduced last year by the previous Government, rather than a change in achievement,” they said.
They quoted Charles Darr, a lead researcher involved in the study quoted by the Government: “We’ve been tracking student achievement in mathematics at Year 8 for more than 10 years, and in that time, there has been no evidence for improvement or decline. We do have a new draft curriculum, however, and the provisional benchmarking exercise we carried out indicates it requires a higher level of proficiency than the 2007 curriculum.”
There are several other ways to measure what’s happening with maths in our schools.
New Zealand students still sit above the OECD average, but have been sliding down the maths ranks in the last two decades, most sharply between 2009 and 2012, and between 2018 and 2022. This is according to the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) report, which compares 15-year-olds around the world.
The 2022 equivalent of the CIPS was the National Monitoring Study of Student Achievement for maths and statistics, which looked at Year 4 and Year 8 students over time.
What everyone seems to agree on is that performance in maths is too low - only 42% of Year 8 students were at the curriculum benchmark, according to the 2022 NMSSA report - and something needs to happen to change that.
Christopher Luxon describes the level of student achievement in maths as a 'total system failure'. Photo / 123RF
Work on the new maths curriculum started under Labour, which welcomed Luxon’s move to bring it forward with a caveat that it must be evidence-based.
Will this work?
That is the great unknown, and one of the biggest questions is over “structured maths”, based on cognitive theory.
Pomeroy and Darragh say this will likely lead to “teachers directly explaining maths to children before they practise it, children repeating maths techniques until they have mastered them, and more rote memorisation of basic facts like times tables”. They describe this as not a recognised teaching method for maths, underpinned by “limited and underdeveloped” research.
The ministerial advisory group recommending the new curriculum even acknowledged the lack of evidence for teaching maths like this.
“While the research base for these practices in classrooms is not as clearcut as the research for literacy, applying general principles from cognitive psychology to mathematics suggests that these practices will improve teaching,” the group’s report said.
Teachers needed to teach topics in simplified, small chunks and then let students use that information in different forms. It can then become part of the long-term memory, from where it can be built on.
This is better achieved in a more structured setting with a knowledge-based curriculum, Johnston argues, instead of the current student-centric approach where teachers have more flexibility in how and what they teach. This has led to students experiencing a different standard of learning across different schools, and sometimes even within the same school.
Education Minister Erica Stanford. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Education Minister Erica Stanford is a big believer in the science of learning, and wants the new maths curriculum to be far more structured, setting out what to teach each year, and how to teach it.
“We have had decades of an experiment, a liberal experiment, of a child-centred, play-based, project-based, open-plan experiment that has not worked,” she recently told the Herald. “We absolutely need to have a shift back, a pendulum swing back to a knowledge-rich curriculum with evidence-based teaching practices.
“The big thing now is everything lives and dies on actually implementing the plan.”
Some teachers have defended the student-centric approach, raising concerns that a “one-size-fits-all” approach will be too restrictive on their ability to meet the diverse learning needs of all students.
At Douglas Park School in Masterton, Year 4-6 team leader Sophie Macdonald said that the draft primary maths curriculum looked fine but there was an expectation that students would work by themselves in workbooks, and children of a particular age would learn the same things at the same time.
“There’s a place for the curriculum itself, with the outline of what kids should be doing at different levels. I think that helps teachers to feel confident about the knowledge kids should have,” she told RNZ.
“But I think the one-size-fits-all approach is not going to work. It feels like there is a bit of a lack of trust in what teachers know and what they do and what works for kids.”
Is giving teachers flexibility incompatible with structured maths? The ministerial advisory group suggested that a careful balance can be struck.
“While teaching must be informed by science much more than it has been, learning should not be understood as a purely cognitive process. The craft of teaching involves bringing effective teaching practices to bear in classrooms populated by children from diverse cultures and with diverse needs. Children must feel welcome and safe if they are to learn in an optimal way.”
The Government has allocated $20 million for professional development in maths for teachers. Photo/123rf
Supporting teachers
A recent report by the Institute of Economic Research said nearly a quarter of all new primary teachers failed NCEA level 1 maths. Similarly, the Education Review Office found that almost a quarter of new primary school teachers are not confident about their maths teaching skills.
The Government is setting the bar higher, with all new teachers needing to have at least NCEA Level 2 maths. It is also putting $20 million towards professional development in maths for teachers.
While this has been welcomed, concerns have been raised with the “rushed” implementation of the maths curriculum at the start of next year, as teaching resources are still being developed.
“Having these resources in teachers’ hands in time for 2025 will mean important processes, including consultation, quality control of resources and teacher professional learning, will be very rushed — if they happen at all,” Pomeroy and Darragh argue.
“This pace is concerning. Teachers are already under pressure to implement other mandatory changes in assessment and literacy.”
The primary teachers’ union, NZEI, has also pushed back on the Government, saying the timeline will pile on too much work for an already-stretched workforce. Some principals have echoed this sentiment - going as far as calling the Government’s timeline “insane” - given that structured literacy is also set to be implemented in term one next year.
The Government has countered by saying that there’s no time to lose.
“We’re not expecting perfect from day one,” Stanford said.
“Just get started. We will wrap around you everything that you need.”
What are Year 8 students expected to know?
Sample test
Question 1
a) 1/2 +1/4 = ?
b) Explain why you think this.
Question 2 - The shaded circle task
An example of the kinds of questions maths students are expected to know by the time they reach year 8. Photo / NZCER
Question 3 - The chocolate bar task
The chocolate bar task
Question 4 - The fractions task
The fractions task
Question 5 - Coloured counters
There are some coloured counters in a bowl.
1/4 are black.
1/5 are green.
1. a) Are there more black or more green counters in the bowl?
More Black / More Green (Tick response)
b) Show how you got your answer. You can use words and pictures.
Question 6 - Closest to 3/5
a) Which of these is closest to 3/5
A. 0
B. 1/2
C. 1
D. 3
E. 5
F. 8
b) Explain why you think this. You can use words and pictures.
Derek Cheng is a senior journalist who started at the Herald in 2004. He has worked several stints in the press gallery team and is a former deputy political editor.
