An insight into children's fluency

An insight into Year 4 children’s fluency with addition and subtraction

Introduction:

The 2014 national curriculum for mathematics outlined three key aims. To ensure that all pupils:

• Become fluent in the fundamental of mathematics
• Can reason mathematically
• Can solve mathematical problems

These three aims – fluency, reasoning and problem solving – are the foundation of our maths curriculum in school, which is built on the White Rose scheme of learning. In 2015-16 we developed fluency across the school, but with a focus on written methods. Previously, each teacher taught calculation in a way they preferred – for example half of Year 5 learned only the grid method for long multiplication and the parallel class learned only the traditional ‘long multiplication’ method. To combat this, we introduced a calculation policy and set out prescribed formal written methods for the ‘big four’ operations – addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. This led to big improvement in arithmetic across school.

In 2016-17 and 17-18 we focused on reasoning and problem solving in school, with much success. Work in lessons was more challenging and scores on the reasoning papers of the KS1 and KS2 NC tests improved. However, in 2018, improved in arithmetic tests stalled at around 75% (as in average % correct on the arithmetic test at KS2 was 75%). This meant that for 2018-19 I decided to focus on fluency again, but I knew something needed to be different if we were going to improve attainment.

I had noticed, in both lessons and assessments, there was an overreliance on formal written methods. I’d observed children dividing a three digit number by 1 using a written method, and even using a column method to do 57 + 10. These children got the correct answer, but wasted a lot of time. I also noticed in this year’s KS2 NC assessment that the question 0.5x28, not one child noticed that multiplying by 0.5 was equivalent to halving a number. A truly fluent child would notice that, and reach an answer of 14 very quickly. Most of our children embarked on the formal written method of long multiplication, and most got it correct, but it again took a considerable amount of time.

Clearly, there was a difference between the ability to correctly calculate an answer and ‘notice’ something about the numbers that may lead to a ‘shortcut’. After reading up on the concept of fluency, I found an article by Russell (2000) which shaped my thinking for this year’s development.

Russell (2000) defines mathematical fluency as being comprised of three concepts:

• Efficiency
• Accuracy
• Flexibility

I had made the mistake previously of considering fluency as primarily about accuracy (getting the answer correct) to detriment of children’s flexibility and efficient with number. I decided to conduct a very small scale piece of research and interview some children about their approach to addition and subtraction, with the hope to gain an insight into how efficient, accurate and flexible our children are at arithmetic. To do this, I interviewed two children at random from Year 4 – one who achieved ‘Greater Depth’ at the end of KS1 and one who achieved the ‘Expected Standard’. They were given each question one at a time and asked to explain to me how they would work each one out.

Methodology:

The questions had been designed so that they could credibly be solved in a number of different ways by a fluent child. When I wrote the questions, I considered how a fluent child in September of Year 4 may solve them efficiently.

a)    547 + 312              this could be done mentally, as no bridging 10 is required

b)    547 + 400             again, this could be done mentally by adding the hundreds only

c)    547 + 298              298 could be added by adding 300 then subtracting 2

d)    547 + 378              this involves bridging and would likely be done using a formal written method

e)    547 + 453              this uses number bonds and children may recognise the answer as 1000.

f)     824 – 413              this could be done mentally, as no bridging 10 is required

g)    824 – 324              children may recognise that this is 500 as the Tens and Ones are the same

h)    824 – 199              199 could be subtracted by subtracting 200 then adding 1

i)      824 – 578             this involves bridging and would likely be done using a formal written method

j)      824 – 807              the numbers are close and may be thought of as a difference (counting up)

Child M: (GDS at end of KS1)

M was able to do a) and b) mentally, and explained his thinking. For a), he added the hundreds, then the tens and finally the ones to reach 859. For b), he did 500+400=900 then “just added on the 47”. He tried c) mentally, but became confused. When prompted with “how else could you solve it?” he chose the column method and found the correct answer, which he did again for d). As soon as e) was revealed, he said “that’s just 1000 – I know straight away!”. When I asked how he knew that, he explained he recognised 47+53 as a number bond to 100 and saw that 500+400 made 900, meaning he had 1000 altogether.

The subtraction questions saw a similar pattern. M solved f) and g) mentally, by subtracting the hundreds, then the tens then the ones. For h) and i) he used the column method, but consistently made the same mistake when ‘borrowing’ hundreds, meaning that his answers were both incorrect. For j), he recognised 800-800 to be 0, so wrote out a column for 24-7 which he correctly calculated as 17.

M showed good flexibility throughout the task, employing a variety of different strategies for different questions. Generally, his efficiency was good – knowing which questions he could do mentally and which he would need a written method for. However, he wasn’t able to manipulate 199, for example by adding 200 and subtracting 1.His level of accuracy was high, with 8 out of the 10 questions correct, however he has a consistent misunderstanding with the column subtraction method.

Child J: (EXS at end of KS1)

J solved a) using column addition and then solved b) mentally, and used a column method again for c) and d). Interestingly, J got c) and d) incorrect because he had forgotten to ‘carry’ the hundred over, although he had carried then ten over from the ones. This suggests that he as a misunderstanding around the formal written method. As soon he saw e), J said, “it’s gonna be about 1000” – showing that he was mentally estimating an answer to his calculations. When pressed how he knew that, he said, “47 + 53 is a number bond to 100, and then 500 + 400 = 900 … no wait, it is 1000 exactly”. He was confident recognising number bonds and using these to calculate.

For the subtraction questions, J did f) in his head correctly, and correctly used the column method for g) – failing to spot that the tens and the ones were the same in the subtrahend. He attempted h) in his head, but got answer of 775 (subtracting 2 from 9 and 4 from 9, to avoid ‘borrowing’). He made a similar mistake with i), showing a misconception around subtraction and the commutative law. He did solve j) mentally by recognising 800-800 was 0 and then subtracting 7 from 24 to get 17.

J showed flexibility in the task, moving from written and mental method to try to be efficient. However, J wasn’t very accurate, as he had two major misconceptions – one around the written method for addition and one around subtraction and the fact subtraction is not commutative.

Conclusions:

Children who achieved GDS at the end of KS1 may generally be more accurate than those who achieved EXS but not necessarily more flexible or efficient – both children were able to calculate with large number in their heads using their own strategies (to various degrees of success).

The children don’t have an over-reliance on formal written methods – they are able to recognise some calculations which could be done more efficiently using a mental method – but they don’t always select the most efficient mental method.

Children are less secure with subtraction than addition. Neither child thought of 824 – 807 as a ‘difference’; both talked about ‘taking away’. We need to do more overt teaching on the three subtraction structures:

• Take away
• Difference
• Partition

Children are not fully secure in using column methods when it comes to “borrowing and carrying”. Children made slips with addition but showed fundamental misunderstanding with column subtraction.

Children seem to be able to use number facts to calculate quickly (for example 5 tens plus 4 tens is 9 tens) without using counting on or fingers. Some children are also able to automatically recognise number bonds, even to 100 or 1000. It would be worth investigating whether children could use ‘nearly’ bonds to calculate – for example “73 + 28 = 101 because I know 73 + 27 = 100 and 28 is one more”. However the next finding does suggest they are possible not able to yet…

Neither child was able to use a compensation strategy (or ‘nearly number’) – for example to add 299 by adding 300 and subtracting 1. There may be value in explicitly teaching this strategy across school, using appropriate numbers.

In the future I’ll be speaking to more children in different year groups and trying to gain an understanding of their efficiency, flexibility and accuracy, with a view to gaining an insight into how we can develop their fluency as a whole.

Making it Stick

Up until very recently, there was a big difference between learning and performance in the maths classrooms of the academy I work in. In this blog, I’ll explain the journey our school has been on to make learning in maths stick. There are no original, flashy ideas in here – they are all synthesised from educational research and far more experienced teachers than I, and I hope I have correctly referenced and credited those who have influenced my thinking.

The problem:

Our children’s maths books were great. They showed challenging tasks being successfully completed by most children. There was a mix of fluency tasks, problem solving and reasoning. Yet test results – not just end of key-stage SATs, but just about ANY tests we administered across KS1 and KS2 – showed very little learning was ‘sticking’. The children were performing, and not learning.

Concepts that should have been built on year-on-year had to be started from scratch each September. Take finding fractions of numbers as an example. The foundations are laid in EYFS by finding half of a number. By Year 2, children should be confident with the standard representation of a fraction and should be able to find non-unit fractions of number, such as two thirds of 27 or three quarters of 48. It is a skill that was covered (note – ‘covered’ is a deliberate choice of verb!) year-on-year up to Year 6. Yet every teacher across KS2 found that every time they revisited the concept it was met with a sea of blank faces, including the old favourite, “we’ve never done this”!

“What don’t they get?” went the typical staff room conversation. “It’s just divide by the bottom, times by the top!”

There we have exactly what they “don’t get”. Year on year, the children were told to find a fraction of a number by dividing by the ‘bottom number’ and then ‘timesing’ (another questionable word) by the ‘top number’. Having been given this shortcut, the children successfully worked through a page of calculations, and moved on. By the time the books were away at the end of the lesson, many children had already started to forget how to find a fraction of a number. But performance in books was very good. Was any actual learning taking place? No. No it was not. We had teaching that was for performance, and not understanding.

First try:

Around this time I switched from English lead to maths lead, and an Exec Head came in to work with me to develop teaching and learning. I was told teaching needed to be more memorable. I agreed. But it turns out we massively disagreed on what ‘memorable’ meant. I was encouraged (read: told) to ensure maths was more ‘fun’. Throw away those text books! Do your column additions in chalk on the playground! How can you make prime numbers memorable? Go apple bobbing for prime numbers! Yes, that one was genuine! We also had to link maths to the wider curriculum. I once spent a lesson with the mathematical aim of teaching children to be able to add large numbers including decimals by getting them to add up the cost of a round the world trip, using iPads. One hour of messing about on Sky Scanner later, the children had a thoroughly enjoyable time but hadn’t completed more than 3 column addition calculations between them. They were engaged; tremendously so. But still not learning.

After a term or so of this we realised – in summary - children remembered the fun activity of apple bobbing but didn’t retain that 17 was a prime number. Clare Sealy writes about the difference between memory and memories in her excellent blog: https://primarytimery.com/2017/09/16/memory-not-memories-teaching-for-long-term-learning/

After joining a MAT we decided to abandon the ‘engaging’ approach to maths and we decided to focus, rightly, on maths in its own right. This was the beginning of the change in culture from performance to learning. It took a long time to address that. Why? Because it’s more difficult. And it can be slower. And the books don’t always have as many ticks in. It was a complete change in philosophy, moving away from tricks and shortcuts to images, models, representations, connections and understanding. A sea-change in the approach to the teaching of concepts such as fractions would be a whole other blog, but it essentially embraced the idea of using concrete and pictorial representations before moving into the abstract. Rather than the best way to teach individual mathematical concepts, this blog will focus on the four significant changes in our approach to curriculum and pedagogy that helped make the learning actually ‘stick’.

Coherence:

We introduced the idea of ‘coherence’ - this is one of the NCETM’s ‘five big ideas’ for teaching mastery. The idea, in a nut-shell, is that “small steps are easier to take”. Rather than rushing in to a concept, we now spend time breaking down the small steps required for deep understanding and introduce them one at a time. For example, in KS1 before going straight into the concept of a half, we spend a lesson on understanding the concept of wholes, and parts of a whole. Then we spend a lesson looking at what equal parts are, before even introducing the term ‘half’. This means that when we come to define a half, the children truly understand the idea of something being split into two equal parts.

Coherence for us also meant that each lesson in a unit built on the lesson that came prior. This way, through the natural course of teaching, Friday’s lesson revised Thursday’s concepts, which revised Wednesday’s concepts, and so on.

The NCETM call this ‘coherence’, but these concepts are not new or unique to an approach advocated by the NCETM. They are grounded in research and are part of Barak Rosenshine’s 17 ‘Principles of Effective Instruction’ (Rosenshine, 2012). The two relevant to coherence are:

• ·      Present new material in small steps with student practice after each step
• ·      Limit the amount of material students receive at one time

Review:

Linked to the idea of coherence, and a further one of Rosenshine’s principles is to “begin each lesson with a short review of previous learning”. We introduced this daily review as a ‘Do Now Activity’, a strategy taken from Doug Lemov’s Teach Like a Champion 2.0 (2013). The children begin each lesson with an activity based on yesterday’s learning (which will be essential to today’s new learning). The task must be something that the children can do themselves; this frees the teacher up to deliver precision teaching to those they know didn’t quite master yesterday’s work, thus making sure they can catch up in the coming lesson.

Towards the end of this year, I found a tweet from headteacher @ShayGibbons1 who, rather than just reviewing yesterday’s learning, uses four short tasks based on learning from yesterday, last week, last block and last half term. I began trialling this with my Year 2 children and it’s something we will be rolling out next year to make the review part of our lessons even more rigorous. This also links strongly to the next concept in the blog – interleaving.

An example of a Year 2 ‘Do Now Activity’ for review

There are countless other ways to review prior learning; these are just the main ones that we have used. The principle remains the same – regular, low-stakes quizzing improves memory. Other great ideas are the White Rose diagnostic questions, creating a Kahoot quiz and using past SAT questions, to name but a few. Aidan Severs (aka That Boy Can Teach) has also written a great blog on ‘No Quiz’ retrieval practice which is full of great ideas: http://www.thatboycanteach.co.uk/2018/06/no-quiz-retrieval-practice-techniques.html

Interleaving:

We still had a curriculum that put things ‘in their box’. So, for example, Year 1 might do two weeks on shape in the summer term. Here, the whole of the shape curriculum would be covered – very well, and in great depth – but then it was never revisited. This had to change, so we looked to create links across the curriculum while still having a blocked approach. A simple example would be in Year 4, during the fortnight block on statistics, ensuring that some of the graphs chosen included negative numbers thus reinforcing learning from the previously studied place value block.

Our work on problem solving also needed adapting if we were going to make learning stick. I had seen many children sleepwalking their way through ‘problem solving’ (term used lightly here), because at the top of their worksheet was the title ‘multiplication problem solving’. So rather than thinking about what the underlying mathematical structure of the questions, children were just picking out the two numbers from the question and multiplying them. Again - performance in books was very good. Any actual learning taking place? Still, no.

We used Craig Barton’s (2018) idea of ‘Same Surface Different Deep’ (SSDD) problems to improve problem solving. Craig writs about them far better and in more detail than I can about them in his book and on his website – https://ssddproblems.com/  – but the theory behind this technique is that finding the correct solution to most mathematical problems involves two steps: identify the strategy needed to solve the problem, and then successfully carry out that strategy (Roher, Dedrick and Burgess, 2014). By giving children lots of different problems with different surface features (names of characters, settings, objects, etc.) but the same underlying deep structure (e.g. calculating perimeter) then we are denying children the opportunity to identify the strategy needed to solve the problem.

An example of SSDD problems we’ve used in KS1

Craig Barton’s SSDD Problems tend to have one stimulus and four different questions around the outside, like the example given. But this isn’t the only way to build interleaving into the curriculum. It can be as simple as after a lesson on multiplication, rather than giving children 12 multiplication word problems, swap some so that they are based on other concepts studied, such as addition of subtraction. Or weave in other areas of the curriculum previously studied, such as the KS1 problem, “If I have three octagons in my bag, how many sides are in the bag”?

A great example came from the White Rose scheme of learning for Year 1, where during the positional language block, children had to use words such as ‘below’ and ‘next to’ to describe the position of a 50p coin relative to four other, different coins. This built on and reviewed their measurement work, as one of the Year 1 objectives is to recognise the value of the different UK coins. Interestingly, if I had given the children this task before teaching the measurement block, this task would have very likely caused cognitive overload, as the children wouldn’t be fluent in recognising the values of the coins which would detract from the actual learning, which was using positional language. Sequencing is very important!

Fluency

It is obvious to anyone who has taught in Upper KS2 that children who know their multiplication facts do better at long multiplication. This seems fairly intuitive. But I never really understood the science of why this was. Then one day I read about cognitive load theory, and this explained it. Craig Barton has written extensively about how cognitive load theory can be applied to the learning of mathematics here: http://mrbartonmaths.com/teachers/research/load.html

Children working on long multiplication - for example - who don’t know their times tables will have to use their working memory to calculate each individual multiplication, rather than pulling it from long term memory, where it would be stored if it was known ‘by heart’. The cognitive load this places on working memory means that there is less capacity for students to think about the structure and process of long multiplication. Less time thinking about long multiplication means that it is less likely to be learned; after all, “memory is the residue of thought” (Willingham, 2009).

To combat this, we introduced a rigorous system for learning number facts. There are many out there – or you could just make your own – but we went for ‘Rapid Recall’ from Focus Education (slightly tweaked to match the 2014 NC). But fluency is more than just learning number facts by heart. Russell (2000) defines fluency with numbers as having three elements: efficiency, accuracy and flexibility. To help make learning stick, as a school we’re now focussing on flexibility, defined by Russell as “the knowledge of more than one approach to solving a particular kind of problem.”

Quite often as a school we would teach children one way to solve a problem, in the (misguided) belief that introducing the children to more than one would be confusing. But this doesn’t lead to true fluency. This year, looking at returned SAT scripts from the arithmetic paper we can see children using inefficient strategies. Hardly anyone spotted that 0.5 x 28 was just finding half of 28; most children did a long multiplication. My colleagues and I also had an interesting debate about the question 28% of 650. All three of us would have solved it a different way: I would have found 25% (a quarter) and found 1% by dividing by 100 and added 3 1%’s to 25%. My first colleague would have found 10% and 1%, doubled the 10%, multiplied the 1% by 5 and added the two totals. The other colleague would have found 30% and subtracted 2%. All are efficient and credible. We decided that we needed to give the children more tasks where they must find multiple solutions to problems and critique the approaches for efficiency. This is our next challenge when it comes to making learning stick.

Summary:

After a long journey, we are finding that children are now retaining what has been taught, even after longer periods of time. The four principles of coherence, review, interleaving and fluency have made that difference for us. We are not at the end of our journey; attainment at the end of KS2 has risen from 40% of children achieving ARE in 2016 to 71% in 2018 – still below national but just by 5% now. And we are getting more children reaching this expected standard than we were getting achieving Level 4 in 2015 and earlier. I hope this blog has been of some use to you, and I’d like to thank the authors of the blogs, journals, websites and books mentioned for their ideas which helped to transform our maths teaching.

References:

Lemov, D. (2013). Teach like a champion 2.0. San Francisco, Calif.: Jossey-Bass.

Rohrer, D., Dedrick, R. and Burgess, K. (2014). The benefit of interleaved mathematics practice is not limited to superficially similar kinds of problems. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 21(5), pp.1323-1330.

Rosenhine, B. (2012). Principles of Instruction: Research-Based Strategies That All Teachers Should Know. American Educator, Spring 2012 pp.12-19,39

Russell, S. (2000). Developing Computational Fluency with Whole Numbers. Teaching Children Mathematics, 7(3), pp.154-158

Willingham, D. (2009). Why don't students like school. Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley.

Workload - Allowing teachers to teach

In the 12 years since I started my Initial Teacher Training, the issue of workload has constantly been in focus. Many believe – and I used to – that the problem is with the DfE, Ofsted and the profession itself. However, since becoming a Deputy Headteacher a few years ago, I’ve realised that in my opinion, most of the ‘crisis’ is at school level, driven by school policies and SLTs.

Yes, there is pressure from Ofsted and the DfE but often their messages are twisted and misinterpreted. Sometimes this might be an unscrupulous consultant willingly doing this to sell a product or service, but often it’s driven by fear. Fear of being ‘caught out’ not doing something. And then what results is a culture of excessive workload deigned to prove what you’re doing, when a well-trained pair of eyes could see this from a quick dive into your everyday practice.

When our new SLT formed in 2016, we as team set out to improve a school that was ‘Requires Improvement’, but to do so in a way that didn’t create excessive workload. In the end, we reduced workload, getting rid of anything that didn’t impact upon pupils’ learning. This meant that teachers have time to focus on their core business: teaching! Unsurprisingly, teaching dramatically improved across the school. This blog will show just some of the things we put in place to allow teachers to have the time they need to plan, prepare and deliver excellent lessons.

PPA:

Firstly, our 2.5 hours PPA is given out from 11:30-12:00 and 13:00-15:00. Lunch is 12:00-13:00. This means if you bring in some sandwiches you can have a working lunch and essentially have 3.5 hours PPA. Or (as I often do!) you can have a stroll out to the nearby shops and have a leisurely, uninterrupted lunch break once a week knowing you don’t have to teach afterwards. You can also stay back as long as you like, meaning you get a really good, dedicated block of time to do what you need to do. PPA happens in teams, so your year group partner and another year group are there with you as a source of advice. You will also ALWAYS get your PPA. If you’ve been sent on a course on your PPA day, we’ll re-arrange it. We always make sure everyone is treated fairly.

Feedback & marking:

We encourage feedback to be given in lesson as much as possible. This includes any marking, which is simply done in a red pen, with ticks indicating areas of success and circles / wiggly lines (or whatever shape is appropriate!) to denote errors or misconceptions. TAs also mark as they go around or work with their group. This means that there really isn’t a lot to do with the books after the lesson. If in the middle of a sequence of lessons, I tend to quickly sort them into three piles – those who need support, those who are progressing fine and those who need a challenge. Rather than writing this in the books, I will just adapt my next lesson to meet their needs.

Schemes of Learning:

For English, we use the Power of Reading and for maths we use the White Rose scheme of learning. These don’t plan whole lessons for you and you must adapt it to your class and your needs but a lot of the decision making is done for you. Instead of ‘what book shall we do?’ or ‘how do we introduce multiplication to Y2’, teachers can spend their time refining the scheme into lessons that are right for their class and their children. The maths and English leads have also got rid of any superfluous requirements for their subject that weren’t having any impact on learning but were taking up teachers’ time (e.g. stuck in WILFs, or target sheets in maths).

Other initiatives:

·         No graded lesson observations – In fact, there aren’t really any formal lesson observations at all. Leaders frequently pop into lessons, look at books, look at data and form a judgment (not Ofsted meaning of the word) through considering a wide range of evidence over time.

·         No planning requirements – Plan how you like! We’d only look at people’s planning if there was an issue with the teaching. We have possible formats for weekly planning available (I use one for maths) but everyone is encouraged to just do what works for them.

·         No fads – no WALTS, no WILFS and absolutely no VAK! In fact, I spent a large proportion of a PD day debunking Edu-myths that still lurked in some corners.

·         No pointless paperwork – only the most necessary of paperwork is produced. For example, our assessment system analyses the data at a push of a button. There only three data drops a year. After each one, teachers discuss pupil progress with the Head or Deputy. The meeting record is filled in as we discuss, meaning after the 30 minute meeting there is no admin or paperwork needing doing.

·         ICT does our admin for us – organising clubs, running parents evening, etc. This means teachers (or any adult!) don’t waste their time on admin tasks.

·         Staff Meetings – Only ever one a week for one hour. No staff meetings when there’s been a Parents’ Evening, and if there is a lot of work on that week or there isn’t a pressing issue, then there might not be a staff meeting that week.

·         Time – Subject leaders get time out of class to monitor their subject.

·         Supervision – Teachers do not do break or lunch duty, except in exceptional circumstances.

·         We never operate a ‘minimum entitlement’ model. We respect our teachers and give them more than the contractually obliged minimum, and as result we get so much back from our dedicated and happy team.

The result of all of this is that teachers’ time is spent teaching, discussing teaching and preparing teaching. Teaching is now rapidly improving, due to teachers have time and headspace to think about it. New initiatives get started and become embedded quicker, because we are judicious about what we start and when we start it. And, in June of last year, we finally got our ‘Good’ judgement, proving that backside-covering paperwork is completely unnecessary. The team saw our school as it was, every day, and judged it to be the Good school we know it is.

So, my message would be, focus on what YOUR school needs to ensure YOUR teachers can teach.

KS2 Times Table Check

The new times table check will become mandatory in June 2020 and today it was announced by Nick Gibb that the government is to start trialling its multiplication tables check in selected schools from next month (https://www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-news/school-trials-times-tables-check-begin-march).

There are already two camps forming on Edu-Twitter – for and against – with strong opinions on either side. I myself think the tests are a good idea. Having taught in upper KS2, I’ve seen first-hand children struggle to be confident manipulating fractions or calculate long multiplication, for example, because they don’t have a secure knowledge of multiplication facts.

My first action as maths leader in 2015 was to introduce a scheme to promote the learning of maths facts, including times tables (and also doubles, halves and number bonds). This system focusses on understanding, then learning by rote. Children regularly take low-stake tests to check they know these facts by heart (they need to answer at least 22/24 questions correctly in 2 minutes). I’ve taught from Y1-Y6 since this was introduced and because of how we use it – in the spirit of regular, low stakes testing which is proven to improve recall – children, in general, enjoy learning the facts and even enjoy the tests. I am aware not all children will, but speaking to children and parents/carers about it at our termly parents’ evenings, we certainly don’t have a culture of fear or pressure around them. But it is rigorous, and we aim to ensure that all children learn these maths facts by heart.

Therefore, I believe that the introduction of the tests will give teachers a set point and standard to aim for, to ensure all children learn these maths facts, and so can use and apply them ready for upper key stage 2. However, I am aware that many disagree.

Some are credible arguments against e.g. cost implications. That’s fair enough – with tightening budgets, is this the best use of money? I’m not sure. I also get that some schools already have an extensive system for learning multiplication facts, but many do not place this emphasis on it, and in my opinion, those children will be disadvantaged as they progress through KS2 and KS3.

But other arguments are flimsy and anecdotal. I’ve seen a comment that says: “Something else those with #dyslexia will fail in”. I don’t find in our in-school tests that children with dyslexia fail. Surely that’s low expectations – expecting that dyslexic children won’t be able to learn their times tables? There are also complaints that this will produce anxiety in children. This is often a generalisation that extends to ‘all’ children, even though many children I’ve taught enjoy a maths test. No, not all children do, but also not all children have a fear of them, either.

I do understand some of the criticism however the key thing to me is not the test itself, but how schools approach it. If schools develop a culture of fear around the tests, doing endless practice and making the results of the tests ‘high stake’ e.g. berating children with poor scores, moving children up or down maths sets based purely on the results, etc. then the tests will be damaging. But that’s not the fault of the test – that’s the fault of the school. And before people play the Ofsted and accountability card, I’ve worked in a school that had two consecutive RI judgments and we didn’t ever use statutory testing to put pressure on children. We got our ‘Good’ in June last year despite attainment still not being high so I don’t buy the accountability as an excuse to put pressure on children.

I welcome any thoughts in the comments – both for and against!