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The Nuffield Foundation has commissioned several reviews of aspects of mathematics teaching and learning, both to inform its own work and as a contribution to the national debate about future directions for mathematics education.

This review was prompted by the various international comparisons of maths attainment, typically at ages 9 and 14-15 that have appeared over recent years notably TIMSS studies together with the OECD PISA series starting in 2000. England has been a regular participant in these studies. The review aimed to identify various themes that might explain why countries differ in their ranking and considered whether there are identifiable characteristics and causes of high maths attainment, at least as measured by the special tests designed for the individual studies. The report also draws on various other individual small-scale research studies, typically comparing pupils in two or just a few countries.

Key findings from the report:

Reviewing the comparison studies, the report finds that a wide range of countries, from across Europe, Asia and Australasia have performed well on one or more of the sets of tests (17 in total).

The authors suggest that for international comparisons to be usable for policy, four assumptions have to hold but they regard all as having "fundamental difficulties". The assumptions are:

• the international studies both have an "appropriate model" of maths attainment and high-performers are genuinely better at teaching maths
• maths education in high-performing countries is stable, coherent and codifiable
• these differences in maths education are the main cause of attainment differences (as distinct from social and cultural factors)
• these education practices in high-performing countries both could be adopted by other countries and would lead to higher attainment.

Having reviewed the literature on international comparisons the authors are sceptical about the scope for "policy borrowing" from high-performing countries and they also argue that such policies might be contradictory anyway.

You can view the report by clicking on the link below:

Nuffield Foundation Mathematics report (opens a new browser window)