Her students have been getting better at maths in recent years. Mathematics teacher Ebrina Smallegange of VMBO Pantarijn in Kesteren also knows why: primary schools in the Betuwe have started to spend more time on it. Smallegange, who is also president of the Mathematics Teachers’ Association: “When students arrive here in seventh grade, they are better at mental arithmetic than they were eight or nine years ago.”
It’s not that complicated, says Dutch teacher Robert Chamalaun: spending more time on reading, writing and math at school results in better readers, writers and mathematicians. As a school, you have to know what you want to convey, how you are going to do it and how you test that, they also say.
Elementary schools have over the past two decades taught so many things other than reading and math—“from media literacy to social skills and gender lessons,” Smallegange says—that the basics have slipped.
Alarming reports have been appearing every now and then about the declining reading and math level of Dutch students for years. Since the beginning of this century, they have performed less well in international comparisons, such as the PISA tests.
It is not entirely clear exactly what the situation is, the Education Council writes in a statement advice that was presented to the House of Representatives on Thursday, but the data that are known “mood gloomy”. Nearly a quarter of 15-year-olds do not reach the minimum reading level – and thus have difficulty reading recipes or instructions for use. 16 percent do not achieve the minimum level in mathematics.
Something has been done about it in recent years, but the plans and interventions in education have shot in all directions and often left schools and teachers in despair and overloaded.
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“Language and math education has received on and off attention in recent decades,” says Edith Hooge of the Education Council. “Then again this, then that again. We have to get rid of that pendulum movement.”
What must be done to turn the tide? More attention for maths and language, says the Education Council. “The entire curriculum must be steeped in language and math,” says Hooge. “It is not enough just to pay attention to it in separate subjects. Schools should integrate it into other subjects.” How? For example, by working with longer texts in a subject such as geography, so that students also learn to read ‘deeper and more concentrated’ in those lessons, says Hooge. “Or by teaching students to read graphs in economics, so that they also pick up some maths. You can process it anywhere. Arithmetic and language should form the basis of all other subjects.”
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The Education Council also believes that the quality of novice teachers must be improved. Their math and reading skills are not always in order. A poll among teacher educators at teacher training colleges and teacher training courses in Dutch and mathematics, carried out by the Kohnstamm Institute on behalf of the Education Council, shows that the trainers ‘consider a significant proportion’ of their graduates ‘do not consider certain parts to be competent for language and mathematics’. This is worrying, says Hooge. Because how can you give good lessons in language or math if you don’t master it yourself?
The Education Council argues for a ‘central examination’ at the end of every teacher training college and teacher training course. The sector is currently still arranging its own final assessment. Hooge: „We want there to be a professional exam, regulated by the government, for every prospective teacher. The bar must be set high and must be the same for every aspiring teacher.”
Max Havelaar
The teacher should above all be enthusiastic about what he is saying, say teachers Chamalaun and Smallegange. “It doesn’t matter which method you use as long as you as a teacher have confidence in it.” Chamalaun is chairman of the association for living Dutch languages and teaches at a categorical gymnasium in Heeswijk-Dinther: „I am now reading Max Havelaar with 5 gymnasium. They find the language difficult, but if you explain the context and the role of the Netherlands in the Dutch East Indies, they find it really interesting.”
For the VMBO students she teaches mathematics, ‘everyday numeracy’ is of greater importance than long division, says Smallegange. Mathematics is not a compulsory subject in VMBO either. Do the math. “Our students need to understand some statistics when they are adults. That if it says ‘80 percent of women think this is a good face cream!” , and they’ve only asked five women for an opinion, then a student should realize that’s not very reliable. They should understand graphs in the newspaper, or at least not be fooled. That from 4.55 pm to 5.30 pm is about half an hour. Such things.”
You don’t have to constantly compare the average in the Netherlands with Singapore or Finland, says Ebrina Smallegange. “We have to think about what we need at the different levels.”