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Education

MPs and Peers Do Worse Than 10-Year-Olds in Maths and English Sats 108

Posted by msmash from the oops dept.
MPs and peers tasked with completing a year 6 Sats exam have scored lower results on average than the country's 10-year-olds. From a report: MPs including Commons education select committee chair Robin Walker took part in the exams, invigilated by 11-year-olds, at a Westminster event organised by More Than A Score, who campaign for the tests to be scrapped. Only 44% of the cross-party group of parliamentarians dubbed the Westminster Class of 2022 achieved the expected standard in maths and just 50% had achieved the expected standard in spelling, punctuation and grammar.

Across the country, 59% of pupils aged 10 and 11 reached the expected standard in the Sats tests of maths, reading and writing this year, down from 65% in 2019, the previous time the tests were taken. Detailed figures published by the Department for Education in the summer revealed disadvantaged children had a steeper fall than their better-off peers. Walker took part in the Big SATS Sit-In Westminster alongside his Conservative colleagues Flick Drummond and Gagan Mohindra; Labour MPs Ian Byrne and Emma Lewell-Buck with the Green party's Lady Bennett to experience the high-stakes nature of the exams. More Than A Score hope the politicians will take the high-pressured experience away with them and realise that "the exams only judge schools but do not help children's learning" at that age.
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MPs and Peers Do Worse Than 10-Year-Olds in Maths and English Sats More

MPs and Peers Do Worse Than 10-Year-Olds in Maths and English Sats

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  • We can beat that (Score:5, Funny)

    by archatheist ( 316491 ) on Thursday December 08, 2022 @05:06PM (#63114888)

    Pff. I live in the United States of America! Our Congress can certainly do better than that. I bet we can get that number down to 8 years old. It's like golf, right?
      Lower is better? USA! USA!!!

  • Sure, I get it (Score:3)

    by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Thursday December 08, 2022 @05:15PM (#63114916)

    Math and English, like most things, if you don't use it you lose it. Students are learning, being taught and tested all the time -- politicians, not so much.

    [ The latter are focused on other things, like whether a werewolf can beat a vampire. :-) ]

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by usedtobestine ( 7476084 )

      If you would have looked at their example questions you would not have made that statement, unless you're telling me that politicians don't need to be able to do simple math...in which case this explains tax and spend politicians very, very well.

      • Re:Sure, I get it (Score:4, Funny)

        by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Thursday December 08, 2022 @05:43PM (#63114996)

        unless you're telling me that politicians don't need to be able to do simple math

        Oh, they definitely *need* to, but ... :-)

      • unless you're telling me that politicians don't need to be able to do simple math

        Very few people need to be able to do simple math. That's what calculators are for. We have developed tools to solve that very problem.

        Actually the most important reason to be able to do simple math is to avoid direct scams where scammers attempt to overwhelm you with changes in notes and change hoping you lose track of how much you were given and how much you owe. In nearly every other situation in life, we have a tool to allow you to live your life.

        • Very few people need to be able to do simple math. That's what calculators are for... In nearly every other situation in life, we have a tool to allow you to live your life.

          And if you are without these tools? What then?

          Any salesman, who can probably do simple math in his head, will recognize the fact and will snow you with inflated numbers.

          If I'm gardening and need some fence and some netting, all I need is a pencil and a piece of paper. Math isn't hard.

          • And if you are without these tools? What then?

            Society breaks down. Except it doesn't. You miss my point by demonstrating a scenario which isn't happening. People forget things they don't do. These people who we are criticising not knowing this stuff are still functioning just fine (as fine as a lying sack of shit politician can anyway).

            Any salesman, who can probably do simple math in his head, will recognize the fact and will snow you with inflated numbers.

            Inflating a number != multi-part arithmetic. We're talking grade 6 here, not if little Timmy can tell two round balls is more than one round ball.

            If I'm gardening and need some fence and some netting, all I need is a pencil and a piece of paper. Math isn't hard.

            Funny you mention that example. Normally I'd agree with you except I liter

    • Math and English, like most things, if you don't use it you lose it.

      I don't agree. I've just looked at some papers https://www.primarytools.co.uk... [primarytools.co.uk] and although I've not done long division by hand since school, it did come back to me. I think it is like having learned to ride a bike.

      Students are learning, being taught and tested all the time -- politicians, not so much.

      As a politician's job is talking and writing, one would have thought they should be good at English.

      • As a politician's job is talking and writing, one would have thought they should be good at English.

        One would think. Did you listen to Herschel Walker in GA? Apparently, he wants to be a werewolf.
        Oh, wait. That makes your point. Never mind. :-)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Rhipf ( 525263 )

        Do politicians actually do much writing of their own though?
        Isn't that what speech writers and lobbyists are for?

        • Grade 6 maths is hardly advanced calculus. Just basic stuff I would hope most adults would know.

          I am suspicious of the results. Politicians are cunning if not intelligent, should do well at that level.

          Australian politicians can certainly count. Votes, supporters, detractors, lots of stats about distributions among seats...

      • Not to pick nits here, but rhetoric as practiced by politicals and English instruction as taught in primary and secondary schools are two vastly different things.

        I write technical reports and presentations as part of my job, and I'm as good as is necessary for my job, but I haven't diagrammed a sentence in nearly 25 years, and I haven't had to analyze the patterns of symbols and metaphors in James Joyce in over 20 years. I'm not sure I'd be as good at it as I was when that took up 100% of my attention for a

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by pjt33 ( 739471 )

          Diagramming sentences is a distinctively US thing, and you probably didn't read Ulysses when you were ten. The questions here are things like "Which of childhood and childship is a word?"

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by ncc74656 ( 45571 ) *

            Diagramming sentences is a distinctively US thing

            I also suspect it's dropped out of use in more recent (and not-so-recent) years. It may have still been a thing when my boomer parents were in school, but I never encountered it in school in the '80s and have only the vaguest idea what it might be. I still managed to swing a 630 SAT verbal when I was a junior, and before that, the 430 I'd gotten when I took the SAT in 7th grade was said to be above the average score for college-bound high-schoolers. That

        • I write technical reports and presentations as part of my job, and I'm as good as is necessary for my job, but I haven't diagrammed a sentence in nearly 25 years, and I haven't had to analyze the patterns of symbols and metaphors in James Joyce in over 20 years. I'm not sure I'd be as good at it as I was when that took up 100% of my attention for an hour a day for weeks and months on end.

          You are talking out of your ass here.

          None of the questions asked about diagramming sentences, or analyzing symbols and metaphors.

          So take your strawman and shove it where you pulled your ideas about the tests (see above for location).

          • I'm pretty sure I had to diagram sentences in the 6th or 7th grade. And I also remember reading Joyce in the 11th grade. And I'm equally sure I'll never do either again for profit nor for pleasure.

            • I'm pretty sure I had to diagram sentences in the 6th or 7th grade.

              So what? The questions don't ask the test takers to do this. In any case, the article refers to the UK where sentence diagramming is not normally taught.

              You are simply pushing a strawman.

      • The tests looks straight forward. Though in an overly too officious a style. Several of the questions did appear to be stuff that was taught in 7th grade for me but not too many.

      • Hmmm... I would have a problem with notation. I don't understand what is asked in arithmetic problems #17 and #29...

    • Politicians use English all the time. They read and write constantly. No one has ever pointed out that the communications coming out of Westminster are written at a 5th grade level. Many also do arithmetic all the time. If you can balance your checkbook then you're pretty much at least average for 6th grade.

      • Whatâ(TM)s a chequebook? :) Itâ(TM)s been so long since Iâ(TM)ve seen one, let alone used a cheque. I probably last worried about âoebalancingâ it in the 90s and wrote the last one in 2007. Maybe 10 years since I received one.

        • I haven't balanced mine in ages, but I write them. I'm not big on randomly giving out my credit card number online all the time. Sometimes the online payment takes more time than writing the check (or cheque but I'm not British and so never wrote one of those). It also is a good reminder to me to actually look at the bill and see what it is rather than allow automatic payments to do things blindly (such as noticing the massive water bill that told me the line had broken).

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Malc ( 1751 )

            Most of our bills get paid by direct debit these days. My water bill though is not. It's annual and I pay electronically using the water company's bank account details. This is quicker and more reliable than writing a cheque.

            You raise an interesting point though about reviewing bills. I'm convinced companies try to get everybody on automatic payments and electronic statements because they know people will review them less. If I get a paper statement, I will look at it; I don't so much with electronic o

    • I'll bet if you asked most of the Eton/Oxbridge graduate MPs/Peers to throw together a sentence in Latin they could do it though. Likewise, I suspect a lot of them could give you a handful of Shakesperian quotes or whatever. They all know which glass to fill with what drink, and which knife and fork to use too.

      As our supposed representatives, does this represent a cross-section of British society? I seriously doubt it.

      (I am generalising here, there are some formerly-working-class MPs/peers, who probably do

  • forgetful more than stupid (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymouse Cowtard ( 6211666 ) on Thursday December 08, 2022 @05:19PM (#63114922) Homepage

    Schools don't teach students to learn. They teach them to remember. And the old adage applies: use it or lose it.

    • Re:forgetful more than stupid (Score:5, Interesting)

      by JaredOfEuropa ( 526365 ) on Thursday December 08, 2022 @05:38PM (#63114980) Journal
      I'm not sure that really applies to what is being taught to 6th graders. Look at the questions [primarytools.co.uk]: Basic arithmatic, grammar and reading comprehension; stuff that we use every day. If MPs cannot complete this test, maybe you need to get rid of the MPs, not the test.

      It's ok to assess whether the SATS is suitable as such an important tool to determine a child's educational future, but the right response to falling scores is not dropping the test. Instead, figure out why the scores are dropping. We're seeing a similar effect in the Netherlands, and while there have been calls to abolish our equivalent of the SATS as well, they actually did look into this. A few things stand out: we have far more children with an immigration background these days, and they struggle much more than native kids, especially with language (UK probably has a similar problem). And the standard for teaching is lower as well, sometimes it's shocking to hear teachers struggle with certain elementary things.

      So we need to fix education. Not abolish the test, but make sure every kid has the means to reach at least a minimum proficiency level.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tsqr ( 808554 )

        I agree. The people who think the skills being tested aren't part of daily life either haven't looked at the tests or have the same level of reading comprehension as those who performed badly on the test. I will admit, though, that some of the grammar questions used terminology (e.g., "subordinate conjunction") that I haven't seen since middle school (it was called junior high school back then in the dark ages), but I was able to figure them out from context.

      • I only looked at a couple of the tests, but you are absolutely right. If they can't add/subtract/multiply/divide, yikes. I thought the questions might be a little harder, but really OMG. I would be ashamed if I were an MP and failed this. Like crawl into a hole ashamed.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

          I know lots of adults who can't really do basic arithmetic, or write reasonably without spelling and grammar checkers, and often a human proofreader as well. We don't really value ongoing learning or even maintenance of basic skills.

          • These are MP's who should at least understand fractions, which are some of the questions in the simple test I saw. I routinely use geometry & calculus on a weekly basis if not daily. I'm not asking for a test of that, but addition/subtraction? I'd think it would be cool if a requirement when submitting your name to run for federal office in the US is that you must take this test (with a proctor) and the results are published for all candidates. That would be enlightening. After all, this is a group that

        • Question, do you know how to do long division without looking it up? There are some questions like that one the test, not difficult ones mind you. I'm sure you can figure out the answer, but would you show full working to the satisfactory requirements of test standard? The reality is 99.9% of people don't. It's not a question of not knowing something, it's a question of never doing something and then being required to do said something under exam conditions. It's also a question of taking shortcuts.

          For many

      • Basic arithmatic, grammar and reading comprehension; stuff that we use every day.

        Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on there. This is America. We don't do that sort of stuff here.

      • stuff that we use every day.

        No we don't. I looked at the question, the very first one "6,155 + 501 + 649 =" ??? What does it equal? Start button, calc, enter, 7305. That is how you answer that question every day. Almost no one solves arithmetic questions by hand anymore because it is much faster to just open a calculator, and thanks to the smartphone literally everyone carries one with them.

        Better one: 672 / 21. I would wager than 99% of people here couldn't remember how to do long division. Now many here would come to the right numbe

  • We forget it.

    Simple.

    • They may not use the basic maths skills of an 11-year-old daily but the problem is that they should be using them daily. How can you decide if, say, a 10% carbon tax on fuel is a good idea if you do not know what "10%" means? How can you balance a budget if you can't master basic arithmetic?

      MPs should be using these sorts of basic maths skills every day the fact that have not to the point that now they cannot is a problem.

      • How can you decide if, say, a 10% carbon tax on fuel is a good idea if you do not know what "10%" means?

        Agreed, but I imagine there are politicians who don't know what "carbon tax" means -- or "carbon" or, ironically, even "tax".

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Pascoea ( 968200 )
        Because most sane people don't even need to do basic arithmetic any more. I work with numbers every day too, yet I still had to google how to do long division with decimal places to help my granddaughter with her homework. Why? Because I know how to run Excel, and I haven't done long division by hand since grade school. I guarantee I would have failed a 6th grade math test as well.

        • Unfortunately there are some concepts that people should know about arithmetic they tend to forget. For example, "adding a percent" is really a matter of multiplication. Consequently, people will think that a 20% discount followed by a 30% discount is a 50% discount. The actual total discount is 44% off. The "I don't need math" flub is off by about 6% in this case. Stores use this to low-key low ball people and get away with it.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

            The classic, which reveals a lot about the age of the person concerned, is "they should teach how to balance a checkbook and do taxes in schools instead of all that math garbage."

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Muros ( 1167213 )

            For example, "adding a percent" is really a matter of multiplication. Consequently, people will think that a 20% discount followed by a 30% discount is a 50% discount. The actual total discount is 44% off. The "I don't need math" flub is off by about 6% in this case.

            10.715% actually :)

        • Because most sane people don't even need to do basic arithmetic any more.

          I take it you have not been following much British politics lately. I'd not count too many of the current crop of British MPs as sane people - and I mean that literally, since I can see no other explanation for Boris, the mini-budget disaster and all the other insane policies and ideas they keep coming up with.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Pascoea ( 968200 )
            Eh, it's the same BS as this side of the pond, just with a weird accent. I don't think they are insane. Misguided, stupid, and asshole-ish? Sure.
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • That's a really bad example, because pretty much everyone knows intuitively how to calculate 10%, 20%, 25%, and 50% of everything,

          Given the test, I'm not so sure. I tried one of them, timed (with my SO). Well I flubbed the timer and reset it part way through but whatever, pretty sure I did 30 minutes. I actually didn't have time to do one question (I basically left the long division ones to the end), I got the rest correct except my undiagnosed but likely dyslexia bit and I copied the answers into the boxes

  • Someone actually got paid to study this? I could have told you that answer for free: No shit someone that's actively practicing a skill is going to be better at it than someone who learned it 20 years ago and hasn't had to use it since. I took more college level math classes than I care to admit, yet I still had to google how to do long division with a decimal place to help my grand daughter with her 6th grade math. Why? Because learned how to do it in 6th grade, and after that I had a calculator.

    • Your intuition might have been right, but you probably never could guess the quantifiers, 44% of MPs passed math, and 50% passed spelling, punctuation and grammar. Science is about quantifying even when general direction of the answer is known. And even if you could guess the quantities based on your personal experience, science is just exactly about making an educated guess then double check it with experimental data.

      But don't worry, nobody got paid for it, because it was not a science paper, it was a poli

    • This was not a study. It was an attempt to show the MPs just how hard these tests were, by a group who want to do away with the Sats for that level because too much of the school year is devoted specifically to preparing for the test, and the pressure it puts on the students, and that it's possibly detrimental to education.

    • Why is the school wasting your daughter's time with long division on paper?

      Why are you aiding and abetting that? Doesn't the school have anything more useful to teach in the limited hours they have with your daughter? How about the ICAO alphabet? The periodic table? Statistics? Fermi estimation (in the head). Any of those would be more useful than long division.

      The last time I did long division (on paper) was sometime in the mid 1970s.

      I'm an engineer. A successful one.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Pascoea ( 968200 )
        I'm not quite sure I understand your argument.

        Why is the school wasting your daughter's time with long division on paper?

        Assuming that was the meat of your argument, and the rest is just there for embellishment... My answer is: Because you have to crawl before you can walk. It's the same reason my first "programming" class was actually microprocessor architecture and theory. The second was learning Assembly. The third was C++. Nobody, except for very specific fields, needs to know about registers and busses and pipelines. You're very hard pressed to find any profession that

  • MPs and Peers do better in political skills (Score:4, Informative)

    by TomGreenhaw ( 929233 ) on Thursday December 08, 2022 @05:25PM (#63114940)
    There is no way those 10 year olds can lie, cheat and steal as well as the least successful politicians.

  • More Grauniad click-bait bullshit (Score:3)

    by VeryFluffyBunny ( 5037285 ) on Thursday December 08, 2022 @05:35PM (#63114966)

    More Than A Score hope the politicians will take the high-pressured experience away with them and realise that "the exams only judge schools but do not help children's learning" at that age.

    If I were a 10 year old & I scored better on my Maths & English tests than a bunch of MPs, I'd be delighted.

    BTW, the claim that doing tests doesn't help learning is false. The testing effect is one of the strongest learning effects known to cognitive science, at all school, college, university, & professional ages, across all subjects. Remembering stuff is the first necessary but insufficient step towards mastering a subject. It forms the foundation upon which all other learning depends. See: https://www.retrievalpractice.... [retrievalpractice.org]

  • With all those centuries of inbreeding, they're lucky if they can still walk and chew gum without biting their cheek and bleeding to death.

    • As ridiculous as the idea of having a queen may seem to us...

    • Well akshually...

      Frankly if only it was a bunch of inbred posh-o's. That would be an improvement over what we have now which is a bunch of Tory cronies, as in people who gave a bunch of money to the Tory party, including the odd Russian spy. Lord Evgeny Lebedev to be precise.

      The sad thing having a bunch of contenders for upper class twit of the year would be better.

      And to think, we left the EU because out elected MEPs and Councillors selected by elected MPs weren't "democratic". Compared to what we have now

  • Shocked (Score:3)

    by quantaman ( 517394 ) on Thursday December 08, 2022 @05:50PM (#63115016)

    Absolutely Shocked [wikipedia.org].

    Kids aren't particularly dumb compared to adults, what they are is inexperienced.

    Meaning you can train a kid to do some fairly advanced stuff and then test them on it.

    Of course adults who haven't seen that same material in decades are going to struggle.

    • That may be so, but this isn't advanced stuff. Someone dug out examples.

      https://primarytools.co.uk/fil... [primarytools.co.uk]

      It's a bit of a problem if an adult hasn't used a percentage in decades, especially if they're an MP and are expected to vote on that sort of thing.

      • Australian tests were quite different, more problem solving.

        I did note a long division, no longer taught at all. When advanced yr 12 maths kids are taught that polynomial division is just like long division, they give blank looks, long division?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

          If I had a dollar for every time I've explained to someone that computing a contrast in a linear model is just doing long subtraction of the two scenarios, then had to walk them slowly through how to do long subtraction....

        • I did note a long division, no longer taught at all. When advanced yr 12 maths kids are taught that polynomial division is just like long division, they give blank looks, long division?

          I'm pretty so-so on teaching long division. Since it's a pencil-and-paper technique, rather than something you can do in your head, it's really not so useful. I don't ever do long division of numbers. I have done polynomials in the past, but I think once people have got to that stage, where they need to divide polynomials, it

      • It would be a problem if you haven't used percentage since that is actually used. But I have a better question for you, two actually:
        a) how often in your adult life have you had to add together 3 integer numbers (not the simple kind ending in zero) and you've actually bothered to sit down and do it by hand rather than pull your iphone out and type them into a calculator.
        b) can you do question 17, and can you get full marks on it, i.e. do you remember how to do long division properly? I sure as heck don't. A

        • how often in your adult life have you had to add together 3 integer numbers

          Depends on what I'm doing. Day job, well, I'm sitting at a keyboard with a terminal open, I don't add by hand. When I'm buildin' shit, yeah I often do. If I want to check a measurement I just scribble some numbers on the nearest plank of wood. I've busted a phone before keeping it in my pocket doing building work, so I now don't keep one there. Plus also adding a couple of 3 digit numbers is quicker than gloves off, get phone open, f

    • Did you look at the material? Or are you just guessing?

      There was nothing in the tests that someone trusted with passing laws for the UK should not be able to answer.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sjames ( 1099 )

        People trusted with balancing their checkbook (or a budget) should be able to answer most of them.

  • I don't see where we're told how many MPs did this. Was it 173? Or 6?

    I'm also wondering how were they selected.

  • FTFA

    Westminster event organised by More Than A Score, who campaign for the tests to be scrapped.

    So self-selected people who are no good at tests are the volunteers for an event meant to show that some people are no good at tests.

    If the point was meant to be that "even intelligent people like MPs can be bad at tests" then it has backfired. These tests have accurately demonstrated that some MPs are idiots, in case anyone did not already known it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sjames ( 1099 )

      The MPs and the people administering the tests are not the same group. They probably made their point "is it fair to insist on 10 year olds passing a test that many of you adults can't even pass?"

  • Politicians can fundamentally be STOOPID. Here in the US, there are notable exceptions: Jimmy Carter, former captain of a Nuclear Submarine. That does NOT happen due to anything other than being HIGHLY competent.

  • know how to do this sort of thing; they normally mark their own papers and claim that they are right and that everyone else is wrong.

  • An MP doesn't use anything but rudimentary math - probably not much more than the basic four... and usually Excel or Calc for that. A 10 year old is closer to mathematics. You don't improve what you don't perform.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sjames ( 1099 )

      Based on the sample I read, many of the questions are just the basic 4 functions. but (ruh-ro) no calculator!

  • They are skilled in politics, not math or English.

    In theory the Civil Service should be supplying the skills that politicians are missing but since at least Thatcher (and gaining momentum under Blair) the CS has been eroded in favour of sycophantic "special advisors".

  • This is an American website, so it is acceptable to leave "US" out of headlines.

    It is NOT acceptable to leave out the names of other countries, as here.

    Editors EDIT!

    How long do we have to keep rubbing the puppies' noses in their shit before they stop ?
  • This isn't a test of whether you can do these tasks, but can you do them quickly. It's timed. If you don't do long division every day you may be rusty. I do advanced mathematics every day, but I don't divide numbers. I can tell you the algorithm, and prove that it works (the proof may be something a 6th grader would struggle with). But I'm probably not as fast as some 6th graders. I looked over the arithmetic test. You have to do about a problem a minute. I'm certain that I can score 100% but there
  • Was there a difference between Conservative (generally privately educated) and Labour (generally state educated) MPs?

  • I'd like to gloat, but unfortunately this might just be a reflection of the fact that the test is garbage. Many tests at that level ask for specific pointless ways of doing arithmetic, irrelevant terminology questions, or names of scientists who allegedly discovered X.

    I need to see the test before I can draw any conclusion.

  • To make the test truly fair, the 10 year olds should also have been required to take it while drunk.

  • Those who can do, those who can't, teach, those who can't teach go into government.
  • The testing works, and doesn't need to be scrapped. What needs fixing is the education system, and the methods / approach to teaching.
    In a working system you'd expect half the people to be at or below average intelligence.
    Basic competency testing of elected/unelected members in the houses of parliament seems like it would be a good thing.
  • When I was a student my job was to study and I got decent grades. Now my job is to work as a network engineer. If someone just plopped the SAT in front of me without letting me prepare, I'd probably do terrible too.

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