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Maths results still below what ESC would like

Maths results still below what ESC would like

Friday 15 November 2024

Maths results still below what ESC would like

Friday 15 November 2024


Work is ongoing across the Bailiwick to bring up maths levels after a drop in attainment at GCSE level across the board.

The Director of Education told a Scrutiny panel hearing earlier this week that "maths has been challenging for a number of different reasons" - partly due to difficulties around the recruitment and retention of specialist teachers.

This summer saw just over half (51.4%) of GCSE students achieve grades equivalent to a C or above in maths - down from 57.8% last year.

The Bailiwick average for the subject, which includes the private colleges, also fell from 69.7% to 62.8%. 

At the time, Education, Sport, and Culture pledged improvements would be made.

This week, Nick Hynes said that work is ongoing.

"We've done some specific work in maths over the last few years in the same way we did with English, and we're now seeing fruition of those English results going up.

ESC_Scrutiny_Resize.png

Pictured: Nick Hynes was on the panel when ESC faced Scrutiny this week.

"We've done a review across all schools with regards to mathematics, I think about 18 months or so ago, and have now got a program in place to improve maths across all of our settings.

"We're seeing fruition of those results going up, certainly within all primary schools and certainly within specific year groups within those primary schools. But it's fair to say that maths isn't quite where we wanted to be, just yet.

"We are seeing that improvement when we're looking not just at the overall end of key stage four results, but we do quite an in depth view, using GL Assessments across all year groups in primary and secondary to really ascertain and pick out what year groups are doing better or not doing better."

Where recruitment and retainment has been an issue, Mr Hynes said ESC is looking at other ways to tackle this with Education bosses planning to give the wider ESC committee an update on this within the next fortnight.

"It is a fact that we have struggled last year across our secondary phase in particular with regards to recruiting and retaining maths teachers," he acknowledged.

"We're now putting together a plan on how we might improve that, but it's a very complicated area, and maths recruitment isn't just necessarily about paying maths teachers more or give them a golden handshake when they arrive, it's actually about what we can do to get all specialist teachers, whether they're maths teachers or anything else, over that five year hump, after which we see teachers maintaining and staying in the profession longer.

"There's a much higher percentage of teachers who leave the profession in the first five years, so what we're doing and sharing with the committee in the next two weeks is a program by which we look at how we can recruit and retain those specialist teachers better, and linked to any financial reward which doesn't necessarily always retain those teachers is about looking to see what we can do to provide really high quality CPD (continuing professional development), but also to see where there may be other teachers who are very good practitioners, who may be interested in switching subjects or switching phases and starting to do things a little bit differently to make sure we can maintain and look at those teachers in the future."

READ MORE...

Official pledges improvements as maths grades worsen

Education working hard to address discrepancy between English and maths results

The “daunting” subject of maths made engaging 

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