Govt to spend $2m on a maths teaching pilot (and pupils might learn that 2 + 2 is not as culturally obvious as it seems)
Whatever the government is doing, we will be paying, but only one minister today has given us an idea of what is being – or will be – spent.
Mind you, Ministers much prefer to boast about their investing rather than their spending.
The one minister putting a figure to her activities today is Education Minister Erica Stanford. She announced the government is trialling a targeted maths acceleration programme “to give more Kiwi kids confidence in mathematics”.
In Term 1 and 2 next year, around 2000 Year 7 and 8 students who are behind in their learning will take part in an intensive support programme to bring them up to the required curriculum level in maths.
The trial will use small group tutoring and supervised online tuition for 30 minutes, up to four times a week for each child.
The trial will run for 12 weeks and cost around $2 million.
The announcement was included in the latest batch of statements and one speech posted on the Government’s official website –
In Term 1 and 2 next year, around 2000 Year 7 and 8 students who are behind in their learning will take part in an intensive support programme to bring them up to the required curriculum level in maths.
The trial will use small group tutoring and supervised online tuition for 30 minutes, up to four times a week for each child.
The trial will run for 12 weeks and cost around $2 million.
The announcement was included in the latest batch of statements and one speech posted on the Government’s official website –
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5 November 2024
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Speech
4 November 2024
Namaste. Namaskar. Namaskaram. Vanakkam. Sat Sri Akal. Kem chho. Greetings to you all.
The Government is continuing to transform maths education, by trialling a targeted maths acceleration programme to give more Kiwi kids confidence in mathematics.
In her press statement, Erica Stanford said the targeted maths acceleration trial will be held in both schools and kura across the country teaching maths using the New Zealand Curriculum and teaching Pāngarau using Te Marautanga o Aotearoa.
This suggests some students will be taught differently from other students.
Pāngarau is the Maori word for mathematics, prompting PoO to consult a government website.
Information under the heading The Importance of Learning Pāngarau advised us:
Pāngarau enhances the creativity, the critical thinking, the logical thinking, and the reasoning skills of students, as well as their ability to strategise, solve problems, evaluate and communicate.
Problems and activities in pāngarau should come from Māori contexts that the students are familiar with.
This raises questions about cultural influences on mathematics.
Isn’t it true in both the Maori world and the Pakeha world that 2+2 = 4?
You might think so, but then we found an article by Keith Devlin headed Of Course, 2 + 2 = 4 is Cultural. That Doesn’t Mean the Sum Could be Anything Else.
Devlin had been alerted to a tweet which declared:
“The idea of 2 + 2 being 4 is cultural and because of western imperialism/colonization, we think of it as the only way of knowing.”
This is one of umpteen articles on the internet which address the influence of culture on maths.
Among Devlin’s more entertaining observations, he said:
… back at the start of the Twentieth Century, Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell produced a mammoth, three-volume work examining the logical foundations of mathematics, titled Principia Mathematica, in which they used the even simpler identity 1 + 1 = 2 as an illustrative example, taking over 350 pages to establish its truth by logical deduction from first principles.
The goal was not to check if the identity is correct in a real world sense. That’s obviously true. The issue was to determine the logical correctness of mathematics. The motivation was that Russell had shown some seemingly obvious mathematical facts led to contradictions. They proved 1 + 1 = 2 to demonstrate that the basic identities can be formally proved, and how it could be done.
But let’s get back to New Zealand and the pilot which Erica Stanford was announcing.
She said the Government is committed to getting 80 per cent of Year 8 students at or above the expected curriculum level by 2030 . This means someone with a bent for maths will be required to do the necessary monitoring.
Stanford says:
“We’ve just released a new knowledge-rich curriculum in time for Term 1 next year that sets out a structured, evidence-based approach based on the science of learning.
“Alongside this, more than 308,000 students will benefit from high-quality, curriculum aligned workbooks, teacher guidance and lesson plans. Our $30 million investment allows every teacher and child to have the resources they need to flourish in the classroom,” Ms Stanford says.
“We have an unrelenting focus on lifting student achievement and closing the equity gap in our education system so all children are equipped with the knowledge, skills and competencies they need to succeed.”
She provided this information:
Make It Count – Maths Action Plan
Curriculum
- A new Years 0-8 maths curriculum will be introduced a year early, from Term 1 2025, with resources available to support teachers.
- $30 million for high-quality, curriculum aligned workbooks, teacher guidance and lesson plans to be provided into every primary and intermediate school.
- $20 million for professional development in structured maths for teachers.
- Teaching Council agreed to lift maths entry requirements for new teachers.
- Twice yearly assessments for maths in primary schools from the start of 2025.
- Small group interventions to support students who have fallen significantly behind.
- Targeted support initiative for 10,000 secondary students who are most likely to struggle to meet the NCEA Co-requisite requirements.
- Ministry of Education will intervene earlier and more often to tackle student achievement issues.
- Education Review Office (ERO) to overhaul reporting with a new focus on student progress, achievement, and assessment.
- Teaching Council agreed to strengthen maths component in Initial Teaching Education.
1 comment:
Does NCE actually have any meaningful educational threshold or significance?
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