I don't wish to blow my own trumpet but my tutor said i was top of my class for the pgce that year, so much so that she filmed me for the next year as a good example, i love teaching and have never wanted to do nething else but i find myself in the situation where i am claiming the doll because i can't pass this stupid numeracy test. All my other colleagues are now in their 2nd yr of teaching and i havent' even don my nqt year. I think something seriously needs to be done about this test in particular because there must be others out there like me that just aren't mathmatically minded but good teachers! I teach languages so i'm not gonna be sat around working out fractions and quite frankly won't do nething in my head and if it gets complicated i will go to the maths dept for help! they don't ask teachers to take a mfl test or a science test so why on earth choose maths! ict and english are at least relevant ! I fear that i will never get my dream of being a teacher and had the worst pgce year ever commuting miles to my placements n getting up at 5am everyday and getting home at 7pm ! it was sooooooo stressful becos of that and now i just feel like it was all for nothing and maybe i should give up and go and work in a shop! soooooooooooo annoyed the government implemented this it's grossly unfair and clearly doesn't help them cos i have to claim benefits!

Maybe you should do an adult numeracy course to brush up your skills.

I'm afraid I also think it's just something you are going to need to learn to do to be an effective teacher.  I thought the test was very fair in terms of making it clear that what it was asking was relevant eg on my one we had to plan what time to leave to get a coach somewhere and there was quite a lot about analysing results which isn't easy but you need to be able to do. The initial questions just involve knowing a few number skills like the relationship between fractions and dividing etc - get a primary school teacher to give you a couple of hours private tuition would be my advice!  They're used to making this sort of thing really clear, and it really does boil down to just a few facts.

 Where I do sympathise is that education has changed so much since some of us were at school - primary school children are expected to do a lot that I wasn't taught until secondary and then with a calculator!  Standards really have gone up!

Good luck

Bobby_Carrot:

I can't believe a person would really sit their and blame the goverment for their lack of effort getting through a compulsory test when they have a degree and a PGCE under their belt?

I absolutely agree with this comment and like the 'sit their and blame'  part of the last sentence.  I hope it was a subtle attempt at taking the mickey and not a grammatical error! 

Speaking as a parent of two primary school children, I am astonished at the display of bad grammar and spelling in their homework books (their teachers' bad grammar and spelling).  

I was also appalled by the fact that the Head Teacher's attitude to my son's struggle in basic numeracy was 'some children just don't understand maths and they get a calculator when they go to secondary school anyway'.  She also continued to mention that she doesn't even have an 'O' Grade in Mathematics, just Arithmetic!

I have applied to study the PGDE.  II am driven by the fact that although my son attends, what many would view as a, good state school, his education has been let down by a few teachers who either don't possess the ability or are just not interested.

 Chris

The pass mark is 17/28. That means you only need to get one mark for the mental arithmetic section if you can get 16 marks in the on-screen part of the test.

Check out:

http://www.mathsmadeeasy.co.uk/qts-numeracy-test.htm