In this series of posts, we’ll be featuring mathematical podcasts from all over the internet, by speaking to the creators of the podcast and asking them about what they do.
We spoke to Beth Goodliff from the National Centre for Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics, about their in-house podcast aimed at maths teachers.
It’s time for our traditional trawl through the New Years Honours list for mentions of “mathematics”, hoping that better-informed readers will fill in the people this crude method has missed. I’ve found the following names:
With the announcement of honours for 1,195 people in the 2014 New Years list, it’s time for the latest in our ongoing Honours-watch series of posts. In this, we search arbitrarily for ‘mathematics’ in the PDFs of the various lists, and hope our well-informed readers fill in the blanks where actual knowledge is required.
The UK Government have released a draft primary school Programme of Study for mathematics for consultation.
The announcement was much covered in the press, which focused on the ‘back to basics’ approach. The Daily Mail reported that “times tables are to be put back at the heart of the curriculum for children’s first years at school for the first time in decades” with other details reported including learning how to calculate using decimal places and fractions, and dealing with numbers up to ten million.
Recent reports from Ofqual and Mathematics in Education and Industry (MEI) highlight positives in the depth of content and takeup of A-Level Mathematics and Further Mathematics but an Ofsted report finds problems in earlier stage mathematics teaching.
You may remember that funding for the National Centre for Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics (NCETM), the mathematics school teacher professional development programme, came to an end in March 2011 and the NCETM entered a “transitional contract” while a new tender took place.
Now the NCETM website has announced that a new consortium has been awarded the contract for the mathematics continuing professional development (CPD) support programme for 2012-2015. The consortium consists of Tribal Education (the previous NCETM contract holder), Myscience (who operate Science Learning Centres), Mathematics in Education and Industry (MEI), and the Institute of Education, University of London.
The NCETM announcement outlines the previous work of the members of the consortium and carries quotes from a representative of each member.