Rote learning returns, long division made optional in new NSW curriculum

NSW school students will get a taste of an old-fashioned teaching technique under the new maths curriculum, but should learning long division be optional? VOTE in our poll.

Learning the times table by rote and the complexities of grammar will make a return to the primary school classroom as part of a shake-up of the NSW curriculum.

Under the draft maths curriculum to be released today, long division will become optional for students who have got through the “core” topics.

When it comes to learning times tables, by the end of year 4 students will be expected to recall the two, four, five and 10-times tables “and related division facts”.

Previously students only had to be able to use strategies to solve multiplication problems up to the 10-times table.

(Back, L to R) Chullora Public School leaders Seba Ayache, Bahia Almir,, Marianne Saad and Zeinab Abdelkarim with students Kooty Hihi, 8, Jamie Sarieddine, 7, Raina Abdul-latif, 10, and Fadel Harris, 11. Picture: Justin Lloyd

University of NSW educational psychologist John Sweller said the return to some rote learning was “very significant” after decades of schools promoting the notion that children should use other mental strategies.

“If you can do something in your head easily, automatically without having to think about it, it means you can do other more complicated things much more easily,” Emeritus Professor Sweller said.

“We can get away without knowing our times tables, but you pay a very high penalty.”

The latest Programme for International Assessment results in 2018 found only 52 per cent of NSW students attained the National Proficient Standard. Performance dropped by 38 points between 2003 and 2018 – the equivalent of a full year of mathematics learning.

The change to times tables was welcomed by Arthur Phillip High teacher Raffael Fantasia, who said students could explore trickier topics with ease if they had learnt them in high school.

“I think recalling times tables is very useful, that is welcome … There are certain facts you need to know to operate in mathematics,” he said.

In year 9 and 10, maths will abandon the three courses of varying difficulty to instead have “core” topics alongside other options in a bid to stretch students academically.

Mr Fantasia said, under the current curriculum, students found it difficult to escape the bottom course and could sometimes just coast along without being challenged. “Once you’re in that box, good luck getting out of it,” he said.

The return to rote learning has been praised by an educational psychologist. Picture: Brendan Radke

Long division, which may be currently taught in year 7 or 8 as part of the “computation with integers” topic, will now be relegated to an optional topic in year 9 and 10.

In the English syllabus, technical elements of languages will be brought forward for primary school students, including using “a comma to separate clauses in compound or complex sentences” by the end of year 4 instead of year 6.

Chullora Public deputy principal Zeinab Abdelkarim said the new syllabus had ­enabled to teachers to teach key concepts more effectively.

“The new syllabus documents are condensed, traditionally we would hear teachers talking about an overcrowded curriculum,” she said.

“Within each strand of the syllabus, there is teaching advice which highlights why it is important and provided practical examples.”