The £11m spent on boosting maths attainment in English schools by copying the Shanghai model (Hello boys and girls, 14 March) could be well spent if the government ensures that our teachers are given the same opportunities as their Shanghai counterparts. Instead of allowing those with no formal qualifications to teach, it could insist that primary maths teachers spend five years at university studying primary maths. English “super teachers” can only dream of teaching two lessons a day, with the rest of the day devoted to professional development in their specialism. Contrast this with the box-ticking mentality peddled by politicians, which gives teachers no time to reflect on their pedagogical development.
One can compare achievement only if the playing field is level but I fear that teachers in England will always face playing up the steep hill and then be criticised by those who fail to provide adequate resources for education.
David Moore
Manchester
• As somebody who brought up my children in England but now works in mathematics education in the Caribbean, I am appalled by the description of the lesson in a London school based on an approach to teaching from Shanghai. When we look at the quality of teaching in the Netherlands, Singapore, Flemish Belgium, Japan and Finland, why are we copying this nonsense? Yes, whole-class teaching is a key feature of effective teaching, but what happened to the vital component called interaction?
When you look at effective mathematics teaching across the globe there is a huge variation but direct teaching based on conceptual understanding and students making sense of mathematics is a common feature. Countries that provide a balance between conceptual understanding and computational proficiency are successful. Looking at the research into children’s understanding of fractions, we see the negative impact of teaching ungrounded symbolic manipulation and learning of an isolated vocabulary.
Giving teachers more time to prepare and having high expectations of their lessons does seem to be a feature of highly effective countries but I suspect the investment is costly. Yes, some countries have specialist mathematics teachers in primary but it is not a feature that is common to the highest-achieving ones. Success is actually rather straightforward: stop chopping and changing, keep developing interactive teaching, invest in supporting the teachers to do this and do not expect overnight gains.
Frank Eade
Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands
• Let’s all follow the example of the Shanghai education system? True, it has invested huge amounts of money, and teachers have time to prepare good lessons. However, a city of 23 million should be educating 300,000 15-year-olds. Shanghai lavishes money only on those 100,000 whose parents hold residency permits. Children whose parents don’t possess a hukou residency permit are unable to access the education system (Report, 31 July 2104). With after-school crammer clubs, the school day can last up to 12 hours. Maths, literacy and science are taught to the exclusion of other subjects. Child wellbeing and health are among the lowest in the developed world, with depression and suicide rates way above European countries. Is this a model we want to follow?
Richard Knights
Liverpool
• Several years ago, I would help my daughters with their maths homework. It was painfully obvious that they had not grasped fundamentals to enable them to solve the questions. Once I ran over these basic elements a few times, they were able to answer easily. Clearly, the teachers had allowed the lessons to finish without ensuring all pupils had understood the basics. And now we have enlisted Chinese teachers whose mantra is to ensure all pupils understand before moving on to the next topic. Am I missing something here?
Paul Garrod
Southsea, Hampshire
• The arrangement of desks (actually, usually tables) and children in English schools varies depending on the teaching format of the particular lesson. So if, as in this case, the teacher were teaching from the front, we would expect to see all children facing that way. Ben McMullen is quoted as saying: “I saw better maths teaching in 35 minutes that I have ever done in 1 hour and 10 minutes.” Well, I’m not surprised. Lessons for seven-to-eight-year-olds should never be more than 45 minutes; even for 11-year-olds 60 minutes is the maximum; research has shown that young children cannot concentrate for longer.
The Shanghai model, as I understand it, takes results from selective schools, not all schools. So results will be high and in those schools it may be possible to keep children together on the same page. We, however, have classes containing children with a wide range of ability. I can imagine the uproar if our brighter children were held back until all children were ready to move on.
Teaching for understanding is crucial: repetitive copying and chanting on its own will not achieve this. The ability to write a fraction does not mean a child understands what a fraction is.
Jane Cooper
Former primary mathematics adviser, Isle of Wight
• “There’s a lot of chanting and recitation, which to our ears seems a bit formulaic”? Whenever I hear someone being critical of chanting, I want to ask them how they learned their alphabet.
Chris Coghill
Oxford
