Practical Advice for Improving Your Child’s Maths - Part 9 - Praise the Primary

While writing this blog I have tried to be clear that I lay little of the blame for the poor maths performance of the student population at the door of teachers. The quality of teaching is of course up for further debate beyond the scope of this work, but it’s transparently obvious to any observer that it is the bloated system that is mainly at fault.

I do, however, want to single out primary school maths teaching for particular praise. It is my anecdotal experience that students come out of primary school with:

i) A strong grasp of the important mathematical concepts (arithmetic, including negative numbers and fractions, basic algebra, statistics)

ii) remarkably uniform performance across the population, especially compared to the massive range of outcomes at GCSE level

It seems to me that primary schools are doing a very good job at teeing up the maths careers of their students, only to have the secondary school maths system pitch it into the bunker. My sense of this has grown alongside my teaching experience, but until now has been only anecdotal. So I went to look at the data.

Getting Down with the Data

A set of information exists called “The National Tables” that tracks various aspects of students’ GCSE performance each year. I used the data for students completing GCSEs in 2019 to avoid any Covid-19 affects. The information I sought was surprisingly accessible as the spreadsheet provides a student’s GCSE results relative to their Year 6 SATs.

So let us consider the 2019 GCSE cohort, who completed their Year 6 SATs in 2014. At the time, SATs were graded in 5 levels from Level 1 as the lowest and Level 5 as the highest. 502,912 students are recorded as attending a state-funded mainstream school, and of those 492,264 scored a Grade 3 or above. That’s a whopping 97% of students scoring those top 3 out of 5 grades. Interestingly the majority of those were achieving a Level 4.

This rough calculation goes to provide some evidence for my claim that students come out of primary school doing pretty well at maths. We could of course argue about how the boundaries of the levels are determined and whether a “Level 4” actually means a student is performing well, but based on my experience and taking the actions of the grading bodies in good faith, I am convinced.

Let us now look at how those same students performed 5 years later. At this time the 1-9 grading system had been introduced for GCSE students, with 1 being the lowest grade and 9 being the highest. It is difficult to convey this information without derision, but there are 2 ways to pass a GCSE. Grade 4 is a standard pass, and Grade 5 is a “strong pass” that maps to a high C or low B in the old grading system.

So how did our 2019 cohort turn out? Of the 226,362 students achieving a Level 4 in their SATS (the second highest grade!!), an incredible 36% went on to fail their GCSE maths. Remember, to fail requires Grade 3 or below. If we dare to ask how many of the Level 4 SATs students achieved Grade 4 or below (a disappointment considering their high achievement five years prior), the number increases to a staggering 69%. That means: of students achieving the second-highest grade at twelve-years-old, 69% could not, to use the government’s own words, reach a “strong pass” five years later.

Bigger is not Better

So what is going on? Are primary schools over-performing or secondary schools under-performing? Actually, I think the main factor is that there is so much less to learn at primary school. Students work within a limited framework that gives them time to process and master the topics. Comparatively, secondary school maths teachers are positively starved for time, dashing from one topic to the next in a desperate attempt to get through all the material.

Well then, is it not natural that primary school students should do better at maths, given the level of the content is lower and there is less to learn? This is a fair question, however we must not forget that we control the level and content at GCSE level. Therefore, we can’t just shrug and say “that’s just the way it is”; it’s the way we made it!

As it stands, we have a maths GCSE system where the sheer volume of work overwhelms students. Rather than learning a small selection of important topics to a high standard, they half-learn an encyclopaedia’s worth of knowledge to a very low standard. As the stats I presented above show, many students go backwards.

Your Primary Concern

As a parent reading this, I am advising you to take your child’s primary maths teaching seriously. It might well be the best maths teaching they ever get, and it will stick with them for the rest of their lives (much more than anything they learn at secondary school). If your child is already in secondary school, it’s not too late, for there is a lesson here. For students struggling in maths the Primary vs Secondary comparison is a case study in how students learn best. Focus on a small set of the most important GCSE topics and learn them to a high standard. For everyone, we should do what we can to facilitate changes in maths education such that the drop off from Year 6 to Year 11 is not so great, and our children can get around to learning some maths.

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As always, if you have specific questions please contact me directly at jake@jakeharristuition.com