Smith: Will Education Secretary put two and two together on maths? (Aberdeen South & North Kincardine Liberal Democrats)

Aberdeen South & North Kincardine Liberal Democrats <info@aberdeensouthlibdems.org.uk>

Smith: Will Education Secretary put two and two together on maths?

March 31, 2009 4:48 PM
Originally published by Scottish Liberal Democrats

Commenting on the official survey of mathematics in Scotland's schools, Liberal Democrat Education spokesperson Margaret Smith MSP has urged the Education Secretary to take action to improve the way that maths is taught in secondary schools.

Although attainment levels for maths in primary schools are good, with over 85 per cent of children in P3 having "well-established or better" skills at the expected level, this falls to 30 per cent by S2.

Teachers were also asked how often additional staff were available to support mathematics lessons. At primary level, around 75 per cent of teachers surveyed reported that additional staff were available to support mathematics lessons at least in 'most weeks'. But by S2 this dropped to just over 50 per cent with more than a third reporting that extra support was available 'once a year or less'.

Commenting, Mrs Smith said:

"It doesn't take a maths genius to put two and two together to work out that something is going badly wrong with maths between primary and secondary school.

"There needs to be a focus on improving literacy and numeracy all the way through primary and secondary school.

"Improving maths in particular will be vital if we are to get more children to study maths and science, which will boost innovation, research and development at a time of recession.

"In Government, Liberal Democrats understood the importance of maths, which is why we introduced maximum class sizes of 20 for maths in S1 and S2.

"The Education Secretary needs to focus on keeping maths attainment high from the peak in P3 all the way through to S2. Her chances of achieving this might have been better if she hadn't signed off on the biggest fall in teacher numbers since devolution.

"It's clear that the small rise in maths teachers is insufficient to provide additional support in lessons and tumbling numbers of other teachers will not improve this situation."