Curriculum plan does a number on maths

Schools urged to focus on arithmetics in bid to help Australia catch up to high-performing nations.

Analysis of curriculum documents shows Singaporean students are expected to master core arithmetic much earlier than Australian children.

Schools have been urged to ditch calculators and ensure mathematics teaching focuses on building students’ arithmetic knowledge and skills if Australia is to have any chance of catching up to high-performing nations.

University of NSW cognitive scientist John Sweller, an expert in the process of learning, has criticised a proposed new Australian Curriculum that emphasises problem-solving and inquiry activities in the teaching of maths, highlighting a lack of evidence that a “learn-by-doing” approach improved academic outcomes.

While the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority has defended the push, highlighting Singapore’s focus on mathematical problem-solving, Professor Sweller argued that the Asian nation’s success was most likely due to high expectations and rigorous teaching of foundational knowledge and skills.

The Singaporean curriculum requires that, by Year 5, students multiply and divide numbers up to 1000 “without [a] calculator”. There is no such stipulation in the Australian Curriculum.

“Singaporean students are, on average, two to three years ahead of Australian students in terms of what they know and what they can do,” Professor Sweller said.

“Australian students need much more foundational work on their number facts and fluency.

John Swelle says ‘Singaporean students are, on average, two to three years ahead of Australian students’. Picture: Nikki Short

“If you don’t know 9 x 7 automatically, and you have to go grab a calculator … you’re not going to be able to progress to solving more complex problems.”

Analysis of curriculum documents from both countries shows that Singaporean students are expected to master core arithmetic much earlier. In Singapore, there is a strong emphasis on “mental calculation” and by Year 2, students know their times tables of 2, 3, 4, 5 and 10. Whereas in the Australian Curriculum, it’s not until Year 4 that “multiplication facts” of up to 10 x 10 are taught, with students able to use “technology to assist where appropriate”.

By Year 5, Singaporean students are taught ratio, rate and speed — concepts not introduced until Year 7 and 8 in Australia. The Singaporean curriculum also introduces algebraic equations in primary school compared to Year 7 and 8 in Australia.

Meanwhile, content descriptions in the draft curriculum contain hundreds of references to students having to “solve problems”, “explore”, “investigate” or “model”, terms synonymous with contentious inquiry-style learning.

ACARA’s draft Australian Curriculum, released last week, has attracted much scrutiny for its focus on incorporating Indigenous history, culture and perspectives across all subjects and its support for approaches to teaching that counter the research evidence.

The aim of the curriculum review was to address the nation’s declining education outcomes and its slide down the OECD PISA rankings.

Maths teacher and author Greg Ashman said Australia’s over-reliance on technology was evidenced by NAPLAN, which, since 2017, had permitted students in Years 7 and 9 to use calculators for most maths questions.

“We have been on this track of emphasising calculator use for some time,” Mr Ashman said. “It can hardly help with the goal of improving performance on PISA.”

According to Professor Sweller, it was unrealistic to expect students to “learn by doing”, particularly when they lacked foundational knowledge.

“We should be teaching students the maths content so that this knowledge can be stored in their long-term memory,” he said.

A spokeswoman for ACARA defended the maths curriculum and said revisions recognised “the importance of students developing a deep understanding of mathematical concepts, skills and procedures as well as being able to calculate mentally”.