Oxford school teacher 'lost sight of role', panel told

Maths teacher, Joshua Sutcliffe, ran a voluntary lunchtime Bible Club at an Oxford school and is alleged to have breached professional standards in 2017 by failing to use a male pronoun to identify a pupil.



The misgendering took place in a lesson, a subsequent appearance on a TV show and in an email.

The Teaching Regulation Agency (TRA) is also considering claims that the teacher acted inappropriately while expressing views on the “wrongfulness of equal marriage and/or homosexuality".

READ MORE: Oxford teacher Joshua Sutcliffe suspended from The Cherwell School in transgender pupil row

Andrew Cullen, representing the TRA, told the hearing on Monday: “The kernel of the TRA’s case is that he engaged in conduct which negatively affected pupils or had the potential to negatively affect pupils.”

Mr Sutcliffe has argued that the proceedings against him represent a “restriction” on his ability to express his faith.

Mr Cullen disputed the argument this case was about censorship and said: “The TRA’s case, is not about speech censorship.

“The teacher failed to separate the preacher from the teacher in the way that he acted.

“If you find there was one incident for which he apologised there can be no finding of misconduct. The TRA’s case has never been that a teacher should be prosecuted for an accidental slip (regarding a pronoun).”

Mr Sutcliffe appeared on ITV’s This Morning Programme and Mr Cullen said this appearance was motivated by a desire to “profess his opinion on the transgender debate”.

Mr Cullen described this behaviour as “ignorant” and not aware to the effect it could have on the transgender pupil, known as Pupil A.

Mr Sutcliffe’s lawyer, Michael Phillips, quoted George Orwell’s and said that “freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two makes four".

Mr Phillips explained: “At the heart of this case is Mr Sutcliffe’s ability to speak truthfully about life, about who we are.

“The very marker of a democratic society, we would say, is the freedom to speak truthfully even when other people don’t want to hear what you have to say.”

Mr Phillips told the hearing that Mr Sutcliffe always treated pupils with “dignity and respect” and never failed to “safeguard their well-being.”

A sex-based rights campaigner, Maya Forstater, the final witness at the hearing, said the use of pronouns was a “really difficult” issue because they formed a part of regular speech.

She added: “It’s particularly difficult where a school has not worked through all the issues.”

The panel adjourned their judgement ahead of a further hearing scheduled for May 3.


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Cedar Hill math teacher wins 'green card lottery' to come to America

 

"I was one of the few that was blessed to have the chance to come,” Asante said. “I knew it was an opportunity to help people and also to help myself."

CEDAR HILL, Texas — For a student to have a motivational teacher in their life early in education can completely change their perspective on a subject or push them towards a career they never intended on pursuing.

For a decade and a half, there has been a teacher at Cedar Hill ISD who has been passing along his knowledge and is thankful for the little bit of luck that even brought him to America.

Barimah Amoo-Asante is a math teacher for 7th and 8th grade at Permenter Middle School in Cedar Hill. In his classroom, you will find signs that read “reflection,” “rotation” and “translation.” But you will also find signs with “trustworthiness,” “respectfulness” and “citizenship.”

That last word is something Asante didn’t always know he would be able to attain in the U.S.

“I’m originally from Ghana in West Africa,” Asante said.

Growing up with six siblings along with a mother who was a teacher and principal, Asante was always pushed to do well at school.

However, when he got to middle school, he really started to struggle with math. It was his weakest subject. Asante said it wasn’t until he had a teacher in high school that made math much easier for him to understand that he looked at the subject differently.

"That teacher was able to motivate me and inspire me by telling me to change my mindset,” Asante said.

Asante loved the idea of being able to help others the way he once was. He also wanted to move to America for more opportunities.

So, he entered the Diversity Visa Program or more commonly called, the green card lottery. Every year, the U.S. government gives people outside America the opportunity to come over through what is practically a lottery system.

As long as you meet certain qualifications, are coming to the U.S. for work and go through an interview process, you are included in the running. Asante was one of the millions who applied in the late 1990s. And he was one of only 55,000 who was picked.

Asante said if he hadn’t gone through the lottery system, it could have taken him 10 or more years to get over here.

"I was one of the few that was blessed to have the chance to come,” Asante said. “I knew it was an opportunity to help people and also to help myself."

Asante initially worked in 20 different states before making his way to Cedar Hill, Texas. This is where he officially became a U.S. citizen and started his teaching career at Permenter Middle School.

"I realize that I'm making a difference in the lives of the scholars,” Asante said. “I wanted to be part of their story."

Many of Asante’s students say Asante has a very distinct style of teaching where he makes them work through problems together while also making them explain every single part of their answer.

"He gives us like little strategies to do, and it make it not really that hard,” 7th grader Kevin Jefferson said. “Ever since we took his class, our grades have been going up.”

"It's pretty easy, actually,” Aubrey Skinner said. “Much easier than 6th-grade math was."

“He breaks it down to where you can understand it from every point of view,” Braylen Lloyd said. “As you show your work, it makes it easier to explain. It makes it easier to comprehend.”

Asante has gone on to now become the longest-tenured middle school teacher in the entire Cedar Hill ISD district, as this is his 18th school year with the district. He has also won countless awards, including most recently Cedar Hill ISD’s Honoring Our Outstanding Paraprofessionals, Lead Educators and Administrators (HOOPLA) Award in January 2022.

However, Asante said his favorite moments are when he runs into his former students when they are older and they tell him they remember not his specific lessons but how he taught them to think critically.

“I always ask them why, why, why,” Asante said. “If they justify their reason, that tells me they really understand."

 

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MIT wins 83rd Putnam Mathematical Competition, sweeps top five spots for third consecutive year

 Twenty-one of the top 25 finishers are MIT students, including the Elizabeth Lowell Putnam Prize winner.

The MIT math dynasty continues to break records for its performance in the annual William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition. For the third year in a row, MIT students corralled all five of the top Putnam Fellow spots, and for the fourth time in as many years, won the Elizabeth Lowell Putnam Prize for the top-scoring woman. In total, a striking 70 out of this year’s top 100 test-takers were MIT students, including 21 of the top 25.

In its 83rd year, the Putnam Competition is the premier mathematical competition for undergraduate students in the United States and Canada and is administered by the Mathematical Association of America (MAA). The intense six-hour exam, which features 12 proof-based math problems, was taken by 3,415 students from 456 institutions on Dec. 3, 2022. Results were announced last week.

Top honors

This year's Putnam Fellows are first-years Papon Lapate and Luke Robitaille, second-year Brian Liu, junior Mingyang Deng, and senior Daniel Zhu. Each Putnam Fellow is awarded $2,500. Zhu has placed as a fellow every year that he has competed in the exam.

The 2022 Putnam Team from MIT is (in alphabetical order) Deng, Robitaille, and Zhu. Teams are composed of the three top scorers from each participating institution. This is the MIT team’s seventh first-place win in the past nine competitions. This year, Harvard University came in second, and Stanford University third. The MIT Department of Mathematics is awarded $25,000 for being the top team, and each team member is awarded $1,000. 

Junior Binwei Yan, who finished in the top 16, received the Elizabeth Lowell Putnam Prize, which includes a $1,000 award. She is the sixth MIT student to receive this honor since the award began in 1992, and the fourth in a row for MIT.

MIT students also dominated the rest of the scoreboard: nine of the next 11 (each awarded $1,000), seven of the next nine (each awarded $250), and 49 of the 75 honorable mention rankings. 

Of test-takers ranked 101-200, there were 28 MIT students, and from 201-500, 47 were from MIT. In total, 145 MIT students placed in the top 500.

“Our students' outstanding performance on the Putnam is a testament to their dedication and hard work,” says Yufei Zhao, associate professor of mathematics, who prepares a group of first-year students for the competition through his Putnam Seminar. “The results of the Putnam are a source of pride for our institution and a reflection of the exceptional talent of our students.”

This year, about 180 MIT students took the exam, which consists of 12 problems worth 10 points each. The top score was 101 out of 120 points, but the average score was approximately 8.2; the median score was one. 

“For all those who did not perform as they hoped, please remember Pierre de Coubertin's quote: ‘The most important thing is not winning but taking part!,’” says math department head Michel Goemans, the RSA Professor of Mathematics.

A full list of the rankings and names of the students can be found on the Putnam website.

Putnam alumni

About half of the top scorers are alumni of the MIT Math PRIMES (Program for Research in Mathematics, Engineering and Science) high school outreach program. This list includes Liu, Robitaille, and Zhu, five of the next top 11, and three out of the next nine winners, along with many of the students receiving honorable mentions.

“Every year, I see familiar names of former PRIMES students among Putnam winners,” says Pavel Etingof, a math professor who is also PRIMES’ chief research advisor. “For the second year in a row, three out of five Putnam Fellows are PRIMES alumni, all of them from MIT. PRIMES truly serves as a pipeline of mathematical talent for MIT!”

In the history of the Putnam Competition, only eight students have become Putnam Fellows all four years that they've participated, including three from MIT and a Harvard student who is now a math professor at MIT, Bjorn Poonen. Only 24 other students in the contest's history are three-time Putnam Fellows; Zhu joins six other former MIT students, including Zhao ’10, PhD ’15, who earned this honor. (Zhu was ineligible to try for four, due to the pandemic’s pause on the 2020 competition.)

Other MIT math professors who were Putnam Fellows include Davesh Maulik, Peter Shor, and David Vogan PhD ’76. One of the contributors to the competition’s problems included former Putnam coach and MIT math emeritus professor Richard Stanley, the founder of MIT’s Putnam Seminar.

MIT’s 2019 top scorers made Putnam history when all five Putnam Fellows were from one institution for the first time. The competition was founded in 1927 by Elizabeth Lowell Putnam in memory of her husband William Lowell Putnam and has been offered annually since 1938, administered by the MMA.

“No matter how well a student performs in the competition, the experience of engaging intensely with challenging problems develops the student's mathematical power and creativity,” says Putnam Mathematical Competition Director Daniel Ullman. “Kudos to every participant!”

Adds MAA Executive Director Michael Pearson, “The future of mathematics is bright because of these students, and we look forward to their continued success.”

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Mathematician Ludovic Tangpi wins prestigious fellowship from American Mathematical Society

Mathematician Ludovic Tangpi has been awarded the third annual AMS Claytor-Gilmer Fellowship. The year-long fellowship was established to further excellence in mathematics research and to help generate wider and sustained participation by Black mathematicians.

Ludovic Tangpi

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Tangpi, an assistant professor in Princeton University’s Department of Operations Research and Financial Engineering, earned his first degree in mathematics from the University of Yaounde 1, received his M.S. from Stellenbosch University in South Africa (in collaboration with the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences), did his Ph.D. work jointly at Humboldt University in Berlin and the University of Konstanz, and was a postdoctoral fellow in mathematics at the University of Vienna. 

Tangpi’s research interests span applied probability, stochastic control, and their applications in quantitative finance (including risk management, super hedging and large population games).

His previous awards include a 2021 National Science Foundation CAREER grant, the most prestigious award from the NSF for “early-career faculty who have potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization,” and the 2021 E. Lawrence Keyes, Jr./Emerson Electric Co. Faculty Advancement SEAS Junior Faculty award, which was established to recognize the most talented junior faculty members in the School of Engineering and Applied Science. He is also a fellow of the Pan-African Research Council. 

The AMS Claytor-Gilmer Fellowship carries an award of $50,000 and is typically conferred on one individual per year. Awardees may use the fellowship in any way that most effectively enables their research — for instance, for release time, participation in research programs, travel support, childcare, etc. The fellowship is named for William Schieffelin Claytor and Gloria Ford Gilmer, the first African American man and woman to publish research articles in peer-reviewed mathematics journals. Read more about Claytor and Ford Gilm

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Parents left totally stumped by 'simple' maths question for 10-year-olds - Can you solve it?

Several parents have been left scratching their heads over a maths question designed for a 10-year-old.

One mum took to Twitter after her 10-year-old daughter came home with a maths question which left her puzzled.

Anna Botting took a screenshot of her daughter’s homework as an example of why Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s proposals to make maths compulsory up to the age of 18 would not work for many pupils.

She wrote: "So maths to 18 for schoolchildren is Rishi Sunak’s plan.

Some teachers even admitted the question was difficult

 

Danny Lawson

“But, genuinely, maths is hard for some of us… This [pointing thumb emoji] my 10-year-old daughter's maths homework, had me stumped."

The problem in question said: "At the beginning of the day, Hasim counted his money. 'He gave his brother 1/3 of his money. He spent £12 on a present for his sister.

“He then counted what he had left, and it was half what he had at the beginning of the day. How much money did he give his brother? Show your method."

A number of the presenter’s followers attempted to solve the problem as many adults admitted they found it challenging.

One person said: "That's a ten-year-old’s? That's very difficult for Year 5! I think Grade 6 at GCSE would struggle with that one."

Another added: "I'm 38 and the way I worked it out was to look in the comments and see what answers other people had because I didn’t have a clue where to even start?!"

A third person commented: "As a teacher, I can't honestly see the point of these highly convoluted maths problems, they just heighten anxiety, feelings of frustration and failure, and let's be honest are no practical use whatsoever. Maths to 18 won't make a jot of difference, critical thinking skills will!"

The mum said the question is an example of why Sunak’s proposals wouldn’t work for all

 

Danny Lawson

Botting later shared the answer which had been “kindly jotted down by daughter’s teacher in classroom”.

She said: "To all who said 24 [tick emjoi] And 72 - read the Q."

If Hasim gave his brother 1/3 of the money, spent £12, and still has half of his money left, then: 12 = (1/6)x. Then x needs to be resolved: x = 72. 72/3 = £24, meaning this is the amount he gave his brother.

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Covid pandemic highlighted importance of statistics: Cambridge varsity professo

In all, 365 students were awarded Ph.Ds, Masters, Degrees and PG diplomas. Of these, there were 29 Ph.Ds, 212 Masters, 77 Degrees and 47 post-graduate degrees in different categories

Citing the example of the Covid-19 pandemic, a Cambridge University professor spoke about the constant demand for explanation of statistics related to Covid. (Express Photo)
INDIA’S LARGE and varied population provides an ideal basis for biostatistical research, said Prof Sir David John Spiegelhalter, University of Cambridge, said here on Tuesday.

Spiegelhalter, FRE, OBE, Chair, Winton Centre for risk and evidence communication, Department of pure mathematics and mathematical statistics, University of Cambridge, addressing the graduating students as chief guest during the 57th convocation at the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI). “Statisticians should welcome the rise of data science and machine learning,” he said.

Citing the example of the Covid-19 pandemic, he spoke about the constant demand for explanation of statistics related to Covid.
“Covid meant constant demands for explanation of the huge number of statistics with which the public were being bombarded. This was challenging. First, there are many complex statistical issues, for example the definition of a Covid death, testing regimes, false positives and negatives, excess deaths and so on,” he said.

During the convocation, degrees and diplomas were awarded to students in the fields of statistics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative economics, quality, reliability, operations research etc. In total, 716 students have passed different courses during 2022. As many as 29 students were awarded Ph.Ds by the institute.

In all, 365 students were awarded Ph.Ds, Masters, Degrees and PG diplomas. Of these, there were 29 Ph.Ds, 212 Masters, 77 Degrees and 47 post-graduate degrees in different categories. Fifteen students were also awarded for their excellence. Besides, a total number of 62 candidates received Post Graduate Diploma in Business Analytics (PGDBA).

“The pandemic demonstrated to everyone how important statistics are both for those making policy and for the public understanding of what is going on. But we know that statistics can be used or misused to support extreme claims, especially on social media and it can be challenging to keep a middle way between polarised opinions. There is often pressure from the media to take a strong view, which I think should be resisted by statisticians and other scientists,”
he added.
Dr G P Samanta, Chief Statistician of India and Secretary Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, Dr. Sankar Kumar Pal, National Science Chair, SERB DST, Former Director and Distinguished Scientist and President of ISI, Prof Sanghamitra Bandyopadhyay, Director of the Institute and Prof. Amita Pal, Dean of Studies were present.

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