Why Canadian students are falling behind in math — and what experts say needs to change

A workbook is seen on a student's desk in an elementary school classroom. (Source: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck)

Math scores among Canadian students have been declining for more than a decade, according to a recent report, and it will take a broad-based strategy shift from educators, parents and society at-large to reverse the trend, an expert says.

“I’ve never seen an adult proudly at a dinner party say, ‘I can’t read,’” Lynda Colgan, professor emerita of elementary mathematics at Queen’s University, told CTVNews.ca in a Thursday interview.

“But people at parties will say, ‘My son’s failing calculus but that’s OK, I failed it five times too, he didn’t inherit the math gene.’ It’s socially acceptable to not like math and to not do well in math and that is highly problematic.”

According to Colgan, a child’s math scores in kindergarten and Grade 1 are a better predictor of overall success in school than reading scores.

In a report published last week, the C.D. Howe Institute called declining math scores an “urgent national challenge,” as early math achievement is linked strongly to success and earnings in many careers including those in the fields of science, technology and finance.

In the report, author Anna Stokke, professor in the department of mathematics and statistics at the University of Winnipeg, said Canadian students across all provinces are on average performing below international benchmarks, according to data from 2023.

“Math achievement has been falling for well over a decade, beginning well before the COVID-19 pandemic,” Stokke wrote in the report.

“More Canadian students now struggle in math, fewer excel, and in several provinces, the decline is roughly equivalent to two or more years of schooling.”

Why are Canadian math scores declining?

Experts largely agree that the reason for declining math scores amongst Canadian elementary students is multi-faceted.

However, one important factor is a shift in recent decades away from teacher-led instruction towards inquiry-based teaching, said Colgan.

“There was a huge move from teaching skills, procedures, strategies and applications to an entirely inquiry-based approach. Basically, children were asked to invent strategies, discover algorithms and invent their own solutions,” she said.

Those are useful skills to develop, said Colgan, noting that mathematicians, for example, approach problems in the same way, but they already have a “whole bank of knowledge” at their disposal.

“What we didn’t do was fill the bank for the kids, and they were left to their own devices to try to solve these problems without any kind of support system, and so that was problematic,” she said.

Stokke agreed with that sentiment in the report.

“For too long, teachers have been told that inquiry-based instruction works best in math,” said Stokke. “That claim is not supported by high-quality research. Explicit, teacher-led instruction is most effective, especially for novice learners and students with math difficulties.”

Colgan also pointed out that many elementary teachers today, whether they realize it or not, come into the classroom with what she calls “math anxiety,” or some kind of aversion towards the subject, often stemming from their own experience learning it in school.

“Many carry that into the classroom,” she said.

“They will say things like ‘This is going to be very hard’ or ‘We’re going to try something really difficult today,’ not because it really is difficult, but because they perceived it as being difficult. Children pick up on these nuances all the time.”

What can be done to fix it?

In the report, Stokke argues that it isn’t a lack of funding that’s holding students back in math, as Canada already spends more per student on education than the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average.

“For example, Japan spends about 14 per cent less per student and gets much better results. Refocusing resources rather than increasing spending is more likely to be effective,” she said.

The report recommends a mandatory multiplication tables check by the end of Grade 4, and universal screening in math for all students from kindergarten to Grade 8.

“These measures would identify students who are falling behind before gaps compound, enable early intervention, and send a clear signal that math fact fluency matters for later success,” the C.D. Howe Institute said in a press release on the report’s findings.

Colgan said that improving math performance should also be a priority for secondary school educators, as less than 50 per cent of Canadian students currently graduate with a Grade 12 math and science credit, a statistic she called “startling.”

“The corollary to that is that because those kids don’t have Grade 12 math, they’re eliminated from between 65 to 75 per cent of all post-secondary programs, all technical programs and all apprenticeship programs,” she explained.

“A lot of times, people don’t know what they’re going to need in a field, and so they assume, ‘Oh, I’m not going to need math to do that,’ well, guess what? You are going to need math to do that.”