Feed A Hungry Mind

Report 4^th March 2014

The primary schools are nearing the end of their long, first term of the year. The schools close on Friday 28^th March for a two-week break.

The start of the new school year in January is always a bit of slow process. While the teachers were getting their ‘schemes of work’ written and settling all the pupils in to their new classes, we took advantage of that time to analyse the examination papers.

Data analyis

We have the very kind permission of the District Education Office Academic Department to take the original examination scripts of the schools in the wards in which we work and to collate the data. This we then pass on to the staff in the schools. This time we were looking at the Standard IV national examinations, and those determine whether some pupils have to repeat the year or not. Their next national examination is the end-of-primary leaving examination at the end of Standard VII.

For the Standard VII examinations we were are only given access to the results and not the examination papers themselves.

Barbara Kerr took this job on board and she studied over 1200 scripts for both mathematics and English Standard IV examinations.

The English examination was not a particularly good test of a pupil’s understanding of English, and the lack of a detailed marking scheme led to some questionable results. For instance, in a spelling dictation which was, for example, question 3a to 3e to cover the five words being tested, many pupils wrote the correct word against the wrong question number, and all were marked as wrong. Overall, despite marking inconsistencies, the examination showed, yet again, the very low level of attainment in English.

The mathematics papers were more interesting. Each question carries one mark, and it is right or wrong. No allowance is made for correct working-out even if an incorrect answer is written.

However, the workings and the answers given have revealed the lack of understanding of various concepts which Barbara had already highlighted to the teachers last year.

The fundamental lack of understanding of ‘place value’ (units, tens, hundreds etc.) gave rise to many mistakes. In a division question, 1734 ÷ 17, many of the pupils answered ‘12’. This clearly shows that they do not understand 0 as the ‘place holder’. In a subtraction sum which involved ‘carrying’, the lack of writing the ‘borrowed’ numbers was the cause of many incorrect answers. Of more interest, and of more concern, is that the problem-solving questions were answered correctly by very, very few pupils. This means that mathematics is not being related to real life, and yet real life is the reason for teaching mathematics! One question asked that ‘if I have read one half of my book, how much remains for me to read?’ and that was answered correctly by a very small percentage of pupils. Another question which outlined items bought and their price and then asked for the change given was very badly done as the pupils concentrated on the total bill but forget about the change.

Questions on perimeter and area of shapes showed confusion with these concepts.

The data has been put into graph and chart form for the teachers to see the results more clearly, and also to see which topics are causing the problems. From this analysis Barbara will work with the teachers on the root causes of the problems and how to rectify them.

Pilot Project

Our new pilot project was delayed. The letter of approval for the project from the District Education Office was very late, and so instead of starting in the middle of January the project only started in the last week of February.

The project is in two schools in Mabogini ward, with which we have already been working, and in four schools in Arusha Chini ward. The six schools will have training, development and assistance in mathematics for all classes in the school, and in English for Standard I and Standard III only. In Standard I the new Language Awareness course, which is a two-year course, will be introduced, and in Standard III the first of the NOEC books will be used.

Jane Firth, our expert in early-years learning, is in Tanzania to help the teachers in pre-primary, Standard I and Standard II with the teaching of mathematics. Our data analysis will help to show all the teachers that these early-years classes are of crucial importance in laying the necessary foundation of mathematical concepts. Barbara will work with the teachers of mathematics from Standard III to Standard VII. Katy Allen and Dilly Mtui will work with the teachers of Standard I and Standard III for the teaching of English. This is an exciting project as it will be a real test of the use of the Jane Firth’s mathematics books, and of the books we have prepared for the teaching of English.

Again, we wish to thank all of our supporters for their donations towards our Whole School Development Programme. We are pleased that we are now forging new ground which has been made possible by our work over the years gaining the trust and support of the education officials. This new pilot project will highlight the causes of the problems in the learning and teaching, and we hope will show that our materials, methods and techniques for solving these problems are suitable and bring good results.

Thank you again for your support.

Very best wishes

Katy

Katy Allen

Director

4^th March 2014