Sucked In

Last night, I got sucked into a Twitter debate about the Government’s new times-tables tests for children in year four.  I don’t have a massive objection to a five-minute on-screen test but I question its necessity.  I was surprised and disappointed by so many teachers’ enthusiasm for the announcement. 

On Twitter, secondary teachers were decrying their intakes for not having quick and easy recall of times-tables facts and pointing out the challenges children then have in studying the key stage three and four curriculums.  This is a fair point, and one to which, I know, many year six teachers will relate, having prepared eleven-year-olds with poor knowledge of basic number facts for their SATs.  Rightly, there is consensus that children should know their times-tables. 

My surprise is because a test, in itself, is not a silver bullet that will suddenly make children better at learning their times-tables and I thought this was something that teachers everywhere would agree upon.  That will continue to depend on the quality of teaching, assessment and learning.  Like primary teachers everywhere, I know the importance of times-tables and have devoted many hours with every class I have ever taught to teaching and testing them in all sorts of ways.  I reckon there are plenty of children who will remember taking home the ‘Mr Parker’s Times-Tables Challenge’ trophy!  I have also devoted many hours to beating my head against a wall over a hardcore for whom nothing seemed to work.  Rather than pile more pressure onto teachers in the form of another test, I would rather there was investment in understanding better why some children struggle to learn their times-tables, what teaching strategies are most effective and in resources to support top-quality teaching.  And if secondary colleagues know how to do it, I wish they would tell us!

Some people believe that it is only with a standardised, national test imposed by Government that teachers will really know which children know their times-tables and which do not.  Really?!  As I posted on Twitter myself, either a child knows her times-tables or she doesn’t and seriously, any teacher who can’t assess this and doesn’t know it probably ought to be for the high jump.

I suppose Nick Gibb has a point when he says that the Phonics Check had the effect of improving children’s learning of phonics by forcing it to the top of schools’ priorities and focusing attention, training and resources on the issue.  (Incidentally, he also says that a lot of schools are doing a good job of teaching times-tables begging the question of what those schools are going to gain from his test and, despite his assurance that school-by-school results will not be published, possibly hinting at an agenda to identify those schools that are not doing so well.)  What I don’t understand is why we need him to do this for us.  The ‘new’ curriculum with its requirement for children in year four to know their times-tables isn’t that new anymore and we already knew there were children finishing primary school with poor times-tables recall.  Judging by the comments on Twitter yesterday, secondary teachers certainly knew about it.  So why haven’t we as a profession done something about it?  Why haven’t primary Headteachers and their staff effectively grasped the nettle? And if the Heads of Maths in secondary schools had so much to complain about, why haven’t they been more effective in working with their primary colleagues to address the issue?

My disappointment is because of the apparent division within the teaching profession – the doubt and lack of faith in each other and the criticism (at least implied) of each other’s teaching and assessment skills.  We ought to be better at supporting each other and at standing up for our professionalism.  Assessment is one of the pillars of teaching but whenever we call for another test – whenever we say we need one to check our own assessments – we imply, at best, our lack of confidence in our own assessment and, at worst, our inability to assess accurately.  When we welcome a test as a means of driving up children’s outcomes, we express doubt in each other’s aspirations and goals for children and in each other’s teaching abilities and we reveal a lack of understanding of the pressures on our colleagues.  When we defer to someone else’s test, we allow that someone else to undermine our professionalism and set the agenda. 

Perhaps that is a large part of the problem: we’ve allowed Government and its agencies to continue setting the agenda for so long that we’ve become divided, it’s become hard to reclaim the agenda for ourselves, we’ve lost the confidence to do so and we’re so busy dancing to someone else’s tune that we don’t have time to compose our own.