The Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) runs every four years. It measures Year 5 and Year 9 students in different countries on what they have learned in science and mathematics. Data from the latest round run in 2023 were published yesterday. 

There is some good news for New Zealand. The achievement of our Year 5 students in science was significantly better than it was four years ago. Neither the Year 9 data for science nor mathematics at either year level have changed significantly since the last round of the study. 

There is also some bad news. For one thing, we have some of the largest achievement gaps amongst the 64 participating countries, between children from affluent communities and those from disadvantaged ones. Only six out of the 64 had larger gaps than New Zealand. 

We already knew we had a problem with our socioeconomic gradient in educational attainment. Just about every international study shows the same thing. 

But the latest TIMSS data also contained an unpleasant surprise – a new gap has opened up between the achievement of boys and girls in maths. In the 2019 round, there was no gap between the sexes in either subject. But in the latest round, boys did significantly better in maths than girls. 

It’s unusual to see educational gaps disfavouring girls in our educational data. In almost all measures of achievement, girls do better than boys.  

Why the TIMSS gap in maths has appeared is something of a puzzle. But other results from the study may hold a clue. 

TIMSS also measures reported classroom disorder. Children rate how often they are disturbed by disrupted conduct while they are trying to learn. On this measure, New Zealand was the fourth worst out of the 64 participating countries. 

Perhaps girls are more sensitive to noise and disruption than boys. If that is the explanation, it’s no surprise that it affected their maths learning in particular.  

Of all the subjects that children learn at school, maths requires the greatest concentration. Children’s short-term working memory is easily overloaded when learning mathematical processes. Noise occupies working memory resources that could otherwise be devoted to learning. 

This is just a hypothesis, but one that would be worth investigating further. One thing is for sure, though. Children don’t learn well in noisy and disrupted classrooms. We urgently need to get that under control.