On 12 and 13 October, the Free State Department of Education, in partnership with VVOB, organised the 4th Annual Maths Summit.
The Provincial Summit provided a platform for professional discourse and offered the opportunity to share best practices and address challenges. Among those challenges are those highlighted in the 2016 Diagnostic Report for Mathematics: in primary schools, learners lack competencies to handle addition, subtraction, multiplication and division when used in word problems. These findings were further corroborated by learners’ performance in the common quarterly tasks results in March 2017.
On both days, presentations were given by experts on several topics, such as the assessment of Maths in the classroom, inclusivity, how to teach in multi-level classrooms, PLCs… VVOB also gave a presentation on the latter and participated in a discussion panel on the importance of PLCs in the teaching of Mathematics. Afterwards, the participants split up in smaller groups to discuss amongst others SIAS, ICT and the importance of language in the teaching of Mathematics.
The Summit offered the opportunity for teachers and district officials to interact and exchange strategies, approaches and methodologies in order to ensure alignment of teaching, learning and assessment according to policy requirements and to improve learner performance in Mathematics.
