Programs to help kids who fall behind in maths do more than add up

Australia’s education system suffers from a ‘student catch-up crisis’ that leaves too many children behind. Early and universal screening for educational risk is the ticket to improving these outcomes.

It is well-documented that overall levels of student achievement in Australia have generally been in decline — or at best stagnated — over recent decades. A concerning number struggle to achieve at the most basic level — with mathematics a persistent and under-appreciated weakness. Around 400,000 Australian students per year (or 10% of students) are below the lowest international benchmark in mathematics, and require additional support if they are to succeed.

Many children who perform poorly in maths in the first few years at school go on to suffer a failure cycle that can be very difficult for schools to reverse. That is because struggling to grasp the basics in the early years can trigger problems with self-esteem, motivation and anxiety. If not addressed quickly, children avoid maths, disengage in class, don’t do homework, and do less practice — ultimately compounding their difficulties with maths.

Early identification of children with numeracy weaknesses can provide the opportunity for intensive, targeted intervention while the achievement gap is still small and before negative impacts on self-esteem and motivation take hold.

However, the school system at large has generally disappointed in providing the education safety net needed for students who struggle. Arguably the most damning statistic in the education system is that four out of every five children who fall behind never catch up to reach proficient levels.

Improving the school system’s report card on student catch-up is critical and urgent. It will take both better identifying school children at risk of falling behind and ensuring the support provided to them is early, quick, and intensive enough to turn their achievement around.

First, universal early maths screening must be done more systematically.

In the health system, the population is routinely screened to identify potential risk of health conditions without waiting for adverse symptoms to appear. School systems can work in a similar way.

Rather than wait for children to fail (such as in their NAPLAN tests in Year 3), early and effective screening can identify those at risk much sooner. Effective screening points teachers to where more time-intensive processes are needed, and supports them to use instructional time to maximise their impact on student learning.

Over recent years, most school systems have moved to universally screen for early reading skills, particularly the Phonics Screening Check. This brief, simple check accurately identifies which students struggle to correctly map letters, and combinations of letters, to sounds — a foundational skill that underlies learning to read.

A comparable approach is also possible in maths, but requires the support of efficient, informative, accurate, and universal screening of core numeracy skills in Year 1.

Over recent years, independent reports to education ministers have highlighted the need for an evidence-based universal early numeracy screening approach to be adopted nationally, with a particular focus on Year 1. However, current approaches to assess early numeracy aren’t fit for screening purposes. They require teachers to spend considerable time completing individual and detailed assessments with each child, which can result in precious class time being diverted from teaching.

Testing also doesn’t focus on the right skills and knowledge that reliably predict later maths success. Less is more when it comes to universal screening — collecting only enough detail to predict risk without adding the burden of collecting information that doesn’t.

Second, getting screening right is only half the equation when it comes to improving students’ outcomes (after all, no one gets taller simply by being measured). Intervention too must be more effective.

Once at-risk students are identified, teachers and schools need strategies and resources to deliver evidence-based, intensive support to those students and monitor their progress to see how well the intervention is working.

Over recent years, significant investment from governments has been made into school-based intervention — particularly small-group tutoring programmes introduced to address student catch-up following school closures in NSW and Victoria.

Federal Education Minister Jason Clare has heavily implied that such policies could soon be scaled up and supported nationally. However, the inconvenient truth is that closing achievement gaps requires more than simply putting students into smaller groups.

Recent evaluations of the NSW and Victorian tutoring programs have shown that students receiving the extra intervention performed no better than similar students who didn’t.

This disappointing result is no surprise, given there’s been little quality assurance to ensure gold-standard practices have been in place. For intervention to work, the right children must be identified and placed into intervention groups, as early as possible, and given the highest quality instruction. Aligning assessment to a systematic, multi-tiered framework of support is the best way to achieve this.

Good progress monitoring tools can inform agile decision-making and adjustments to ensure interventions are having the desired impact. This avoids waiting months — or years — to find precious time and resources have been misdirected into insufficiently rigorous approaches, as has been the case with NSW and Victorian tutoring initiatives.

Australia’s student catch-up crisis must be addressed with improved early screening and intervention. A crucial step is to ensure that an evidence-based universal screening approach is in place for essential numeracy and reading.

Time in school is a precious resource, and children are more precious still. Our teachers need the support of efficient, evidence-based tools to identify difficulties early and give every student the opportunity to be a successful student.

Kelly Norris is a Senior Research Associate at the Centre for Independent Studies and the author of Screening that Counts: Why Australia needs universal early numeracy screening.

Photo by Vanessa Garcia.