Christian Christrup Kjeldsen is head of the National Center for School Research and one of the people behind the report.
He believes that the conclusions should give deep frowns.
– It is a very marked and very worrying decline in the mathematics subject, he says.
The decline comes after a nearly 20-year period of general progress in the subject.
The development means that Denmark today has slipped to a 24th place in mathematics compared to a 15th place in 2016. A total of 58 countries participate in the survey, which is conducted every four years.
At the same time, Denmark is one of only nine countries that have experienced a decline in the level of mathematics in the last four years. The development means that the Danish result is back at the same level as it was in 2007.
In addition to a general decline in the academic level, the proportion of students who reach a highly advanced level in mathematics has also declined over the past four years.
According to Christian Christrup Kjeldsen, it is especially worth noting that the development has taken place in less than four years with a reformed primary and lower secondary school.
– We do not get around the fact that when we did the survey in 2015, the students had only gone half a year in the reformed school, whereas the students we tested in 2019 have only gone to the reformed school, he says.
– So we can not say anything about the instruments that have been set in motion, but the ambitions that all students should be skilled and good at arithmetic have not been fulfilled.
Christian Christrup Kjeldsen believes that the results call for a national effort.
Minister for Children and Education Pernille Rosenkrantz-Theil (S) also reads the Timms report very seriously.
It was also under a Social Democratic Minister of Education that the reform was introduced in its time.
– It is quite serious and contrary to the intention of the primary school reform, which had the main aim that more children should leave school as better readers and better at mathematics, she says.
Today, Pernille Rosenkrantz-Theil will make no secret of the fact that the reform on this point seems to have failed.
– The reform is set in the world with the best intentions, but when the purpose was that the children should be better at mathematics and leave school with the arithmetic skills needed to be able to do well in our society, and we then get this measurement, who is the first with children who have only gone to school during the reform, then there are some things that need to change, she says.
Therefore, the Minister will set up an expert group in the new year, which will make recommendations to strengthen students’ competencies in mathematics.
Source: The Nordic Page