Many UK pupils can’t add, spell

More than a quarter of children in the UK aged between 10 and 12 cannot add two small sums of money without using a calculator, a survey has revealed.

Hectic lifestyles are leaving parents with less time helping children with their homework

Youngsters are leaving primary school unable to spell, add or do times tables and their parents do not have the time to help them, new research shows.

Around a third cannot do division or basic algebra while half do not know what a noun is or cannot identify an adverb. Almost a third cannot use apostrophes correctly.

Despite this, parents only manage to spend less than 10 minutes a day helping their children with their learning, according to online tuition service Mytutor, which commissioned the survey.

More than a quarter of children surveyed could not add £2.36 and £1.49 to get £3.85; more than one in five could not use the correct version of ‘they’re’, ‘there’ or ‘their’ in a sentence; almost a third could not pick the correct use of an apostrophe from three simple sentences, and more than four in 10 couldn’t spell the word ‘secretaries’ correctly. Over a third could not divide 415 by five and a quarter did not know the answer to seven multiplied by six.

Almost half the 1,000 parents surveyed said they think their child is worse at maths than they were at the same age, and more than a third felt their child’s English was worse than theirs was at the same age.

Almost four in 10 parents said they spend less time learning with their children than their parents did a generation ago – with only 30 per cent spending more time than their parents did.

Nearly six out of 10 parents spend less than an hour a week learning with their children, breaking down to around eight-and-a-half minutes a day. One in five parents spend less than 30 minutes a week learning with their offspring.

Nick Smith, head of online tuition at Mytutor, said: “Maths and English are key skills for children as they enter secondary school, yet our study shows many are already slipping behind their peers and could be lacking confidence.

“Addressing these shortcomings early can make an enormous difference to a child’s school career.”

The survey of 1,000 children aged between 10 and 12 found that one in four did not know their times tables, a quarter could not use decimal points, and two in five cannot spell simple plurals. Mr Smith added: “Hectic modern lifestyles are leaving parents with less and less time to spend with their children – whether that is helping them with homework or other educational activities.

Shadow education secretary Stephen Twigg said: “Clearly, as this reports demonstrates, there is still much to be done to ensure children leave primary school with a grip of the basics.

A Department for Education spokesman said: “Getting the basics right at primary school is vital.