Jodie Palmer has wanted to be a teacher since she was 13. But last year her dream came crashing down when she failed to pass the numeracy test. It meant the 22-year-old could no longer start her training, which she’d already secured through School Direct.
“I was heartbroken,” says Palmer, an English literature and language graduate. “I cried and cried and cried.”
She’d spent a year preparing for the exam – including taking practice tests and having one-to-one tuition – but the pressure of the mental arithmetic questions kept tripping her up. “I could do the maths, just not within the time they set,” she explains.
The numeracy test, which all aspiring trainee teachers must pass, has two parts. In the first section candidates get 11 minutes to answer 12 mental arithmetic questions, then in the second, they have 36 minutes to answer 16 written questions that cover skills such as interpreting data. It is designed to ensure all teachers have a basic competency in numeracy (there’s also a literacy test), on top of the required minimum C grade at GCSE.
Sample questions from the arthithmetic section include asking candidates to work out how much money a class would raise if all 30 students took part in a sponsored spell test,getting an average of 18 spellings correct – each worth 20p. Another question asks trainees to calculate six out of 25 as a percentage.
Palmer is one of nearly 2,000 people who have been prevented from training to teach in recent years because of failing the numeracy skills test. When the exam was first introduced in 2000, people were given an unlimited number of tries and could begin a training course before passing the exam.
In September 2012, however, the government made passing the test a mandatory requirement to train, limited people to just three attempts, raised the pass mark and stopped people re-taking the test for two years if they failed three times. The Department for Education (DfE) said the changes were being made to ensure only high-quality candidates trained, and to raise standards in schools.
Since then DfE figures show that, out of the 124,000 people who have taken the test, 1,962 prospective teachers have failed their three.
While the percentage of those stopped from training is small, it is worrying given the critical shortage of teachers in England.
In August government data predicted a 10% shortfall in the number of trainees for this year. A range of key subjects have failed to meet government targets and some disciplines have attracted barely half the numbers aimed for.
Whatever the statistics, the issue has seriously affected candidates like Palmer – and others who started teaching courses before the change and have found themselves unable to qualify.
Since Palmer failed she’s been working as a level 3 teaching assistant at a primary school in Sheffield — the school would like to take her on through School Direct if she passes the test next year. Ironically, part of her role involves teaching maths, but failing the numeracy test means she can’t teach the subject as a qualified teacher.
Palmer thinks the situation is ridiculous. Julia Smith, who has been running tutoring sessions on the test for four years, agrees. “We’ve got to get it banned,” says the former secondary school maths teacher, who also sits on the teaching committee of the Mathematical Association. “The whole test has nothing to do with the maths you need in the classroom [...] I’ve never met a teacher who’s needed to calculate how much carpet is needed in the classroom in under a minute; it’s ludicrous.”
The numeracy test has also been a stumbling block for Katherine Shaw*, another aspiring teacher. She felt confident with the maths, and consistently passed the practice tests, but suffered from panic attacks in exam conditions.
“I might as well have been doing the test in Swahili, because when I’m experiencing a panic attack I literally don’t understand what I’m reading or hearing,” she explains.
Shaw argues it’s unfair she’s been unable to train because of something that’s out of her control – and she doesn’t understand the logic behind the two-year ban on re-taking the test either.
But a spokesperson from the DfE defended the decision, saying it is “vital in helping to maintain our world-class teaching profession”.
They said: “The test is part of a rigorous selection process, designed to make sure new teachers have the crucial literacy and numeracy skills needed to give every child the best possible start in life.”
Smith meanwhile is very concerned that the test is preventing a lot of high-quality candidates from entering the profession.
“I’ve had people in front of me who you can tell are going to be brilliant teachers,” she says. “They go above and beyond with the test, they’ve been working on their maths every night, and yet we’re saying, you’re out.”
She emphasises that candidates already need to have a grade C or above in GCSE maths to train. The government should up the grade requirement if this isn’t good enough evidence of numeracy skills, she argues.
“[The test] compounds everything that’s wrong in maths education,” she says. “We should be celebrating maths, not making people fearful of it. And we should be embracing the new teachers that are stepping forward.”
*Name has been changed as she wished to remain anonymous.
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