Not adding up

A report about how primary school children are performing is a mixed bag. It's not all bad but here's what stood out for me.

It says, Girls and boys performed equally on most maths questions, and disparities between the performance of children in high and low-decile schools had reduced in the four years.

That's good I thought. But is it? It could be that the performers in the higher decile schools aren't doing as well. There isn't enough information in the article to ascertain whether this is the case but;

Otago University's latest National Education Monitoring Project reveals a marked decline in pupils' knowledge of basic number facts and their ability to correctly answer simple maths problems, particularly at Year 4 (eight and nine-year-olds).

So, at least in the basic maths area, if the disparities have reduced, it stands to reason the declining performance must be more prevalent in the higher decile schools. If that isn't reassuring enough for a parent the following quote is;

Annis Hew, whose nine-year-old daughter, Tiffany Ang, receives extra maths tutoring in Christchurch once a week, said she wanted her daughter to excel beyond New Zealand's average standards.

"We have come from Malaysia and we found the system here had a lower standard," Hew said.

"She was above average when she got here, but we wanted her to be at the same standard as she would be in Malaysia, so we have sent her to tutoring to help with that."

The lesson is don't just rely on the school to do the job. Make sure you know what your kids don't know.