Too many adults failed maths at school, but…
When we talk about the number of adults who struggle with maths, many people who have good maths, ask ‘why’. They can’t understand ‘how it was allowed to happen’ and they automatically assume they must have gone to a ‘bad’ school with ‘poor’ teachers.
If only it was that simple. I have heard so many stories from adult learners who failed to achieve the basics in maths – and indeed English – at school and none of them paint a rosy picture of school life. But scratch beneath the surface and you find a complex set of reasons why they failed to grasp the basics and few make you reel in horror at the school system or the teachers’ practices. As with all complex issues, the reasons for adults ending up struggling through life feeling they can’t spell or manipulate figures are many and varied. They are a combination of learning preferences; attitudes to learning – sometimes formed at home and sometimes a reaction to fitting in with peers; rates of development and learning speeds being out of step with the race through the curriculum; motivation; and of course, low aspirations. Sometimes you can throw into the mix, bereavement, divorce, changing schools, addictions, caring duties and there you have it – a 40 year old with the expected skills of an 11 year old. One who remembers being alienated from the secondary curriculum because he or she lacked the basic literacy, numeracy and self esteem to engage with it.
Schools and their teachers continue to improve year on year. New ways are found to help children learn and this is particularly true of maths where the focus on mathematical thinking and ability to use and apply maths, rather than the series of sums with a tick or a cross that many of us may remember. Teachers work hard to raise expectations and aspirations; they focus on motivation and how to get everyone to achieve their very best within the school day. But they are only part of the picture. Parents are their children’s first and most important educators and their role in valuing and supporting learning – particularly maths – cannot be under-estimated. But, sadly, many do not have the skills or confidence themselves to nurture these skills in their children. So we have generation after generation who struggle with life’s essential skills every day.
The issue is complex, but we, alongside over 20 partner organisations, are taking the first steps towards a better solution through the Maths4us initiative. We are working to provide more opportunities and resources for adults to re-engage with maths learning. This includes the training of 8,000 Maths Champions who will encourage adults to face up to maths and improve their skills and a programme of Family Learning that focuses on getting parents and carers to feel confident in their own maths and helps children to grow up feeling positive about maths and their ability to use and apply it.
The Maths4us messages are simple and clear:
- Everyone uses maths everyday – and everyone can get better at it.
- Better maths means you can make your money go further.
- Improving your maths is infectious: children, grandchildren and friends will learn from you.
- The more able and confident you are with maths, the stronger your job prospects.
- Learning maths as an adult is different to how you learnt it at school.
If NIACE and its partners can make this work, we will be able to make a difference – not only for this generation, but also the next one and the one after that.
I manage the Functional Skills provision at City of York Council. Previously, as a literacy tutor, I occasionally covered maths classes and one to one sessions, both in the community and in the workplace. Whilst I’m very confident with my own maths, it was actually quite tricky to always come up with strategies for learners who were struggling with simple concepts and I often had to refer to maths “experts” for advice.
While I think in theory the government’s idea of maths “champions” in the workplace is great in terms of promoting maths as a positive thing, I’m concerned when they suggest that anyone and anyone can teach maths – It’s just not that simple – and poor teaching strategies could lead to people who already think they can’t do maths having their doubts reinforced.
We’re certainly very keen here in York to get involved in any NIACE led maths activities promotions though – count us in!
I think maths champions and maths specialist teachers and people like you, Fiona, who mightn’t call yourself an “expert”, have overlapping roles, with fairly porous boundaries. I think champions do sometimes have a real contribution to make when they offer help to family, friends or colleagues, usually on a just-in-time basis, because that’s often the only source of help available at the time. If they set themselves up as experts that could well be disastrous – I agree with Fiona that it’s not that simple, but I think most people in this situation know that the deal is that the champions / helpers are positioning themselves more like contributors to online forums than “proper” teachers. Training for champions aims to make sure that they understand the boundaries issue, give out this message about being helpers rather than teachers, and also encourage people to take up more formal learning opportunities. And I hope the page http://maths4us.org/2012/03/05/could-you-be-a-maths-champion gets this across; I think the idea being promoted is closer to “let’s work together on this” than “let me teach you”. Maths Champions help to overcome the fear factor often felt about maths. They aren’t teachers rather these are people who can reassure that maths may not be as difficult as people often think. Maths Champions get some training, some tips and useful stuff to give to people who they know need a little more help.
I think that’s very different from the situation where adults put themselves into a formal learning situation; there, as Fiona says, they are entitled to expect expert support. NIACE, the LSIS STEM project and NRDC have all run well-received sessions recently aimed at teachers who are not maths-specialists, but who are expert in teaching literacy / ESOL / vocational subjects and who are increasingly finding themselves called on to give maths support to their students. Teaching maths, as Fiona says, is definitely “not that simple”, so part of the training is about how best to make use of experts. But realistically, given that there aren’t enough maths specialists around to make it possible to have one in front of every learner, given the pervasiveness of maths in many other subject areas, given the relatively early stage of development of sophisticated online support, given that some (many?) adults would rather eat live spiders than enrol for a formal class, and given how often “just-in-time” needs crop up, I think we do need to draw on a range of teachers-supporters-helpers.
Having said all that, I do think Fiona’s point is very important; we don’t want to create more maths casualties. We may be thinking of champions as first-aiders at the moment, but do need to start thinking about training some of them to become paramedics / triage nurses?