Over testing in schools

There is a great concern regarding the hyper-accountability of the school system. Pupils are tested almost to destruction, and schools are held accountable for their results. The upshot of this is that teachers teach to the exam, rather than provide the pupils with an education. This failing permeates all school subjects and is just one reason why so many parents have chosen to teach their children at home. Home education / home schooling allow parents to educate their children rather than cram them for an exam. Cramming in schools has reduced mathematics from an imaginative subject, which teaches pupils how to solve problems, to one in which pupils just follow routines for no particular purpose. Success at maths has become the result on a good memory. Pupils who can remember the routines and how to use them are good at maths, those that cannot, aren’t. Many teachers recognise this problem, but they are part of a system which they are powerless to change, and upon which their livelihood depends, so they are reluctant to rock the boat, they simply go along in the direction which their line manager directs them, and they do their best. Puppet Maths sprang out of my disillusion with maths teaching in schools. I wanted to reintroduce imagination into the subject, and make it fun for the pupil. I want to make maths education something that children will enjoy and a subject that they will succeed at.