LONDON, Feb. 18，2014 （Xinhua News agency） —Britain will send experts to East China's Shanghai to learn from the city's experience in maths teaching in an attempt to raise the teaching standards. British Education Minister Elizabeth Truss is to lead a delegation of experts on a fact-finding mission to Shanghai's schools next week to see how children there have become the best in the world at maths, to get a first-hand look at maths classes and teaching methods there, and particularly to investigate why the performance of almost all children in Shanghai is high, regardless of gender or income. Britain was last year placed 50th out of 148 countries and regions in the World Economic Forum's competitiveness ranking in quality of maths and science education. Two years ago, Shanghai topped the 2012 international PISA tables for maths, while England was ranked in 26th place. The top five were all in Southeast Asia, with 15-year-olds in Shanghai judged to be three years ahead of their peers in maths. The education department said: "England's performance in maths has lagged behind while other countries have improved and overtaken us, including Poland and Germany." Actually, it is the latest step in the government's drive to raise standards in maths, looking at what has made schools in the far East the most successful in the world in teaching the subject. "Shanghai is the top-performing part of the world for maths—their children are streets ahead. Shanghai and Singapore have teaching practices and a positive mind that make the difference. They have a belief that diligence makes up for lack of ability," Truss said. "Our new curriculum has borrowed from theirs because we know it works—early learning of key arithmetic, and a focus on times tables and long division（长除法）, for instance." She was determined to change the situation as performance in maths is weakening the country's skills base and threatening the productivity and growth. The government is emphasizing maths because of the importance of good grades in the subject to young people competing for good jobs in a global labor market and to the economy more generally. An education and skills survey released by the Confederation of British Industry last year showed that 30 percent of employers reported dissatisfaction with the standard of school and college leavers' numeracy. More than two-thirds of employers said they wanted both maths and science promoted more in schools. 小题1:Why does the British government send a delegation of experts to Shanghai?
|