Summer holidays affect children's ability to do maths

Another surprising finding reported by Malcolm Gladwell in his book “Outliers” is that in the USA, the least well performing pupils make better progress during school year than the best performing pupils do, but their performance falls back over the long summer holiday; whereas the best performing pupils’ performance goes up over the summer, when the children are away from school. The conclusion drawn from these findings is that during the summer the activities that the best performing children undertake enhances their mathematical ability, whereas those undertaken by the least well performing pupils allows their mathematical ability to atrophy. This is linked in the book to the social class and the income of the children’s families. It is proposed that the high earning parents steer their offspring in directions that enhance their maths during the holidays. There are a number of interpretations that can be placed on this deduction. One is that the parents of the high achieving pupils are in some manner hothousing them during the summer, but alternatively, it could just be that they are interacting with their children in a manner that stimulates their thinking and keeps them sharp. But rather than look at what the wealthy parents are doing, let’s think about what the parents of the low achievers are doing. The answer is very possibly that they are simply leaving their children to their own devices. At Puppet Maths, it has occurred to us that if children enjoy maths, then they would choose to practice it themselves without needing prompting from adults. That is the aim at the centre of our vision. We want all children to find maths interesting and find maths fun. We want them to choose to do maths because they enjoy it, and not only because an adult is directing them. We want to make maths interesting, so that children choose to practice maths themselves.