Kids Dont count

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Culture, Technology Documentary hosted by Paul McGann and published by Channel 4 broadcasted as part of CH4 Dispatches series in 2010 - English narration

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Kids Don't Count In 2009 more than one in five children left primary school having failed to grasp the basic maths skills required by the national curriculum. In a two-part special, Dispatches asks why and how are we failing Britain's children when it comes to maths. Dispatches follows a class of final-year pupils at Barton Hill Primary School in Bristol as their staff adopt a radical approach to teaching, in a bid to improve the maths ability of these children before they head off to secondary school. The problem couldn't be more urgent. Research shows that failing to grasp the fundamentals of maths at primary school leaves only a one in ten chance of catching up by the age of 16. Dispatches hears from leading lights in the worlds of business and academia - including the CEO of Sainsbury's, Justin King, and George Davies, formerly of Next and Asda - about the impact on the economy and on adult life of leaving school without basic maths skills. In a provocative nationwide exercise, Dispatches examines the standard of primary maths teaching in this country by testing the teachers. No tricks; just 27 questions that a bright 11-year-old would be able to answer. The shocking results are revealed in the programme. In the first programme, the Head drafted in maths specialist Richard Dunne. Children who had previously struggled with maths thrived under his programme, which taught them how to understand abstract concepts and relate sums to the real world, and gave them lots of opportunities to repeat the basics so they could be memorised. But as their SATs approached, under pressure to improve results, the Head temporarily set aside Dunne's methods. In this second programme, the SATs are over but many of the children have lost enthusiasm for the subject and still do not have a grasp of the basic building blocks for maths. Dunne returns to Barton Hill to help the children with their mental arithmetic, joined by Countdown presenter Rachel Riley, who visits the school to help encourage the children to tackle their maths demons. Sitting in on a maths lesson, Riley is shocked that many of the children struggle to do sums in their heads and do not know their times tables. In a bid to inspire the children in a subject she feels passionate about, she organises a 'children versus adults' Countdown competition at the school.