Professor Hamsa Venkat, Numeracy Chair at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), outlined a five-year research based intervention at 10 government primary schools in Gauteng. “At grade six level, we found pages of unit counting for calculations. When we see pupil workbooks like that, we have to ask — what is happening in teaching, especially at intermediate phase?” Venkat said the researchers found problems with coherence at foundation phase teaching and evidence of knowledge gaps among teachers at intermediate phase. Among the interventions, content knowledge and coherence gaps were addressed in 20 days of training for teachers. Attendance was increasing at these training courses, she said, and the baseline for numeracy skills among grade two pupils had improved.
Professor Jill Adler, mathematics education chair at Wits said in working with 10 free and low-fee schools, her research had focused on mathematical discourses in instruction. “Maths is abstract, so how we unpack it is important. Talk is central in the class,” she explained. Teachers at the schools participated in maths teaching framework training, with the first three years of the programme delivering encouraging signs of improvement.
“Then, in 2014, the results dropped significantly. We don’t know why,” she said. “However, pupils taught by teachers who had participated in the course made bigger gains than those taught by teachers who had not. For us, this is promising,” she said.
Margie Keeton, founding chief executive of the corporate social investment agency Tshikululu Social Investments, elaborated on the Public Schools Maths Challenge Project (MCP) by the Epoch and Optima Trusts, founded by Anglo American for the furtherance of excellence in maths education. Keeton said the Maths Challenge Project had set out in 2008 to identify historically black, coloured and Indian schools with a high number of black pupils achieving higher grade maths passes. Of 178 such schools identified, 86 were engaged in the programme across South Africa. The project did not design an intervention. Instead, “we asked schools to design their own interventions”, said Keeton.
“We wanted to put money and resources into the hands of people who knew what to do with it.” The results of the project have been positive, she said. “The project has had a sustained, positive impact on pupils’ performance, as well as slightly increasing the number of pupils writing maths. The MCP schools showed a slowed or arrested decline in maths results, even when the national averages dropped,” she said. By 2014, when the national average for quality maths passes was 15%, the MCP schools had an average of 40%.
The lessons learnt from the Public Schools Maths Challenge Project, Keeton said, included that one size does not fit all when it comes to interventions.