The provincial government has announced it will help fund additional training to upgrade math teaching skills of teachers in a bid to improve math scores of students at the elementary school level.
Education minister and Guelph MPP Liz Sandals announced on Jan. 8 the Liberal government will provide up to $4 million to help teachers gain additional qualifications to upgrade math skills taught in schools.
The money is part of a review of the Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) Grade 3 and Grade 6 test results handed out in September that found students lacking in math skills.
Sandals said the review showed teachers are failing to teach basic math skills to students, resulting in the math score decline.
“We do think we can have kids doing better in math than they are now,” Sandals said in a telephone interview with the Advertiser.
The money can be used by teachers to cover the cost of courses to upgrade their math teaching skills.
The minister said the move is based on annual (EQAO) scores of individual students that found those with low scores at the elementary level continued to score poorly as they progressed through the school system.
“If you miss the understanding (of basic math skills) you tend to struggle,” Sandals said.
The province has already included additional math skills for would-be teachers going through the new two-year teacher program, which replaced the previous one-year program to achieve a teaching certificate.
The $4 million will apply to give current teachers “additional qualifications,” and to help those teachers “to understand how to teach math.”
The money for additional training is welcomed by the Upper Grand District School Board (UGDSB) and its chair Mark Bailey.
“We’re absolutely pleased to have this additional funding to invest in our teachers,” Bailey told the Advertiser in a telephone interview.
Individual additional qualification courses cost teachers between $700 to $1,000 to take during the summer. The courses, according to Bailey are paid by the teachers and not the board.
“The board does run courses, workshops, etc. during school hours and some after school (such as the after school math sessions) and we also run a Summer Institute where we would offer a half day session on various topics, including math,” Bailey added.
In September Bailey, on behalf of the board, raised concerns about declining math scores registered by Upper Grand students.
Primary students scored 64% while the provincial average stood at 67% and in the junior grades, student math scores came in at 52% compared to the provincial average of 57%.
Sandals said it is hoped the upgrades will give individual school principals several teachers to choose from to teach math within their schools.
The review also looked at the Ontario curriculum and compared it against curriculums taught in other provinces and found Quebec was ahead. She said the review found curriculums taught in the two provinces were similar, but Quebec’s was deemed more successful based on more intensive training of teachers.
“Our hope is over time we’ll have one or more teachers (in each school) with additional qualifications,” the minister said.
