Ukrainian school children fleeing their country and joining classrooms in Italy and France are dazzling their new teachers with their maths skills, prompting debate about the slipping standards in western European classrooms.
As part of a wave of five million refugees that have fled Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, 10,000 Ukranian children are now enrolled in French schools and 16,000 in Italian schools where they have shown, in general, that they are a year ahead of their peers in the same age group in maths.
“Ukrainian students are much more comfortable at doing mathematics than French students,” Pierre Priouret, a maths teacher from Toulouse, told French the news outlet BFMTV.com.
“All my secondary school colleagues who have Ukrainian students say they perform better,” he added.
A second French maths teacher, Marianne, said she had “rarely seen students who succeed so well,” adding that the Ukrainians were a year ahead in maths and able to pick up languages fast because they already spoke both Ukrainian and Russian.
“I met some who spoke better English than me,” she said.
The glowing reports from French teachers were noticed by the Italian educational site Orizzontescuola, which has received a barrage of similar comments from Italian teachers after posting them.
“We were inundated with posts from Italian teachers agreeing with their French counterparts that these kids are a year ahead,”Andrea Carlino, an employee of the site, said.
The Italians had some ideas about why the Ukrainians enjoy a better mastery of numbers.
Ukrainian school children fleeing their country and joining classrooms in Italy and France are dazzling their new teachers with their maths skills, prompting debate about the slipping standards in western European classrooms.
As part of a wave of five million refugees that have fled Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, 10,000 Ukranian children are now enrolled in French schools and 16,000 in Italian schools where they have shown, in general, that they are a year ahead of their peers in the same age group in maths.
“Ukrainian students are much more comfortable at doing mathematics than French students,” Pierre Priouret, a maths teacher from Toulouse, told French the news outlet BFMTV.com.
“All my secondary school colleagues who have Ukrainian students say they perform better,” he added.
A second French maths teacher, Marianne, said she had “rarely seen students who succeed so well,” adding that the Ukrainians were a year ahead in maths and able to pick up languages fast because they already spoke both Ukrainian and Russian.
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“I met some who spoke better English than me,” she said.
The glowing reports from French teachers were noticed by the Italian educational site Orizzontescuola, which has received a barrage of similar comments from Italian teachers after posting them.
“We were inundated with posts from Italian teachers agreeing with their French counterparts that these kids are a year ahead,”Andrea Carlino, an employee of the site, said.
The Italians had some ideas about why the Ukrainians enjoy a better mastery of numbers.
“Over there they teach like we taught up until 20 years ago,” wrote one teacher, while another who spent two months teaching in Ukraine said: “The text books are similar to those our parents used back in the 1940s.”
Apart from old-fashioned text books, the teacher said discipline in the classroom was key.
“There was silence in the classroom and the canteen and teachers were more respected by parents,” he wrote.
“Before leaving class, a student would ask the teacher if he or she had behaved well. The parent would be waiting outside. If the child had not followed the lesson or had disturbed other children they would be punished by the parent.”
Rosamaria Lauricella, a headmistress in Rome who has worked with Ukrainian children, agreed that they were well behaved. “They really respect the rules, they are very disciplined, and this helps them learn,” she told The Times.
“I can see they are really good with numbers and quicker at using tablets and computers than our children.”
The impressions of teachers in Italy and France appear to be at odds with scores drawn up by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
In its most recent survey of achievement levels in schools around the world, conducted in in 2018, it gave Ukraine a 453 score in maths, lower than Italy’s 487 and France’s 495, and well below the 502 score achieved by the UK.
Roman Shyyan, a Ukrainian educational expert who has worked on reforming the country’s schools, agreed that maths lessons could be “tough” in Ukraine, however.
Children started regular maths lessons at the age of six and averaged four, 45-minute lessons a week, he said.
He added that during the one day a week set outside for teachers to drop the curriculum and work on integration and problem solving with children, teachers often wanted to insert an extra hour of maths.
“I fear children may be overloaded with maths,” he said.
In Italy, Andrea Carlino said that whatever the Ukrainians were doing in class, it was working.
“These children, who have arrived here because of a tragedy have shown us we have some catching up to do,” he said.
Originally Posted by walrus
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