math teaching

Too many schools are "teaching to the test" in mathematics, stifling genuinely stimulating thinking about the subject, a report suggests. Education watchdog Ofsted looked at 26 schools, sixth forms and other colleges in England and found that about half of lessons failed in this regard.A shortage of qualified maths teachers left some groups taught by non-specialists. In one further education college, a group working on the "application of number" was taught by a tutor whose highest maths qualification was a grade D at GCSE. the Ofsted report follows a government-commissioned review of maths in 2004 by Professor Adrian Smith, principal of Queen Mary, University of London. He said maths was so central to much of the modern economy it should be treated as special, not on a par with other subjects.