New national curriculum commas in big numbers

[moved]

Found this in my spam. It's been a busy couple of weeks.
Yes to commas.

Use of commas as thousands separators

Where numbers in test questions have 4 or more digits, commas will be used as thousands separators for the 2016 mathematics tests onwards.

Where pupils use a symbol other than a comma as a thousand separator in their answer, no marks will be awarded. Where a comma has been positioned incorrectly but the correct digits are in the correct order the mark(s) will be awarded.

[Guest55]

Absolutely criminal - I'm furious - how confused are children going to be in September when they enter Year 7?!

[moved]

Don't worry, they'll be in the year 7 tests too!

[ToadMum]

Found this in my spam. It's been a busy couple of weeks.
Yes to commas.

Use of commas as thousands separators

Where numbers in test questions have 4 or more digits, commas will be used as thousands separators for the 2016 mathematics tests onwards.

Where pupils use a symbol other than a comma as a thousand separator in their answer, no marks will be awarded. Where a comma has been positioned incorrectly but the correct digits are in the correct order the mark(s) will be awarded.

But particularly to that last sentence. So complete gibberish will get you a mark, but adhering to international convention gets you nothing?

[moved]

Utter madness!

[mystery]

it surprised me too. But, equally, I did not think it was clear from the curriculum document that commas were out.

Is a gap considered to be a symbol?

Is it possible please to put the full email on here including who and where it was from, date, time etc. Why doesn't it show up on dfe website as amended instructions of some sort for 2016 ks2 maths test?

Maybe it is spam? Or maybe these are British Values.

[Proud_Dad]

Found this in my spam. It's been a busy couple of weeks.
Yes to commas.

Use of commas as thousands separators

Where numbers in test questions have 4 or more digits, commas will be used as thousands separators for the 2016 mathematics tests onwards.

Where pupils use a symbol other than a comma as a thousand separator in their answer, no marks will be awarded. Where a comma has been positioned incorrectly but the correct digits are in the correct order the mark(s) will be awarded.

I think some people may be over-reacting or mis-interpreting this statement.

What it says to me is that numbers in QUESTIONS with 4 or more digits will include commas as thousands separators. IMO that's a good thing. When I read 3718945323.67 its not immediately obvious to me what the number is. When its written as 3,718,945,323.67 I can immediately see that the number is 3.7 billion.

Some people have said that use of commas is archaic but they are still widely used in the real world of finance and accounting (in the UK at least). If you set the format of an Excel spreadsheet to currency or accounting it will automatically display a number with comma separators. So in my view its a good idea for children to be aware of this notation.

The statement in the email does NOT say that pupils MUST us comma separators in their answers. (That's my understanding of it anyway). I'm assuming/hoping that if they use spaces or no separator at all that will be fine. All it implies to me is that IF they do choose to use a separator symbol it should be a comma rather than say a dot, which makes sense as it could get confused with a decimal point. (A space/gap is not a symbol).

[mystery]

Yes, as long as a space / gap is not a symbol (which like you I think it's not although it does clearly represent something), that's fine with me too.

The thing that puzzled me as a parent was that my children were taught in maths at school last year that commas as separators were out in the new national curriculum. But I couldn't see any reason for them saying this from the things I had read online. And now, they just seem to have put it into the newsletter as though it's something special for the KS2 tests 2016 and a change from what the government had previously said ......... I think maybe though that it was unclear before and this recent email is now a clarification.

But it wouldn't have cost them anything more to make it clear in the email that a gap is fine!

And why isn't it on the main DfE website - particularly as many text books have jumped the gun and scrapped commas.

Yes, much easier to read with commas or gaps. And expecting gaps in a child's written work is a little unrealistic too as a child doesn't know until he / she has written it down and thought about it where the gaps should go. Whereas adding commas is easy to do afterwards - just like dotting i's and crossing t's.

[Proud_Dad]

Agree that the email should have been clearer that gaps (or no separators at all) wouldn't result in a wrong answer.

Also agree that adding commas at the end is easier than working out gaps in advance.

And expecting gaps in a child's written work is a little unrealistic too as a child doesn't know until he / she has written it down and thought about it where the gaps should go.

Don't agree with this though. My DS's written work has gaps all over the place, although not necessarily where they should be!

[mystery]

Oh for sure!! Best gap I've seen recently was one where the learning objective was to learn to write precisely about some topic or other. There was nothing written at all!