Dispatches: Kids Don't Count
02 March 2010 by Editor
Dispatches: Kids Don't Count
Channel 4
There are few things more pleasurable than to cuddle up in front
of the television tut-tutting at the educational shortcomings of
the generations below. I was duly much enjoying the
Dispatches on why one child in five now leaves
primary school lacking basic numeracy until the voiceover mentioned
that many children were so dumb that they thought the answer to a
half divided by a half was a quarter rather than, obviously, one.
Instantly I was transported to the panic of a maths lesson at my
prep school when the deputy head walked in to find my teacher lying
on the floor. Mr Curtis assured him he was fine: "I just fainted
because Billen got a sum right."
Sensibly speaking, it was no comfort at all to discover that
thousands of primary school teachers are apparently as innumerate
as I am. Dispatches set 155 primary teachers 27 questions that a
"bright 11-year-old" should be able to answer. More than half could
not divide a half by a quarter (answer: two, right?) and only one
teacher got every question right. No wonder at Barton Hill in
Bristol, a primary school picked on by Dispatches and populated by
children who hated maths and teachers who had been no cop at it at
school themselves, only nine out of 30 final-year pupils had
mastered the basics when tested.
To read the rest of the article, please visit the Times online website.