Financial integration, banking supervision and sustainability of the Western Balkan countries

Purpose: This paper examines the need of financial integration of Western Balkan countries as the main indicator of the region’s economic growth. Design/Methodology/Approach: We provide an overview in order to explain what the financial system in the region is. Primarily we concentrate in the banking sector and the nonperforming loans in the region. They require attention and standardization of regulatory classification. By establishing a regional platform it would be of additional value and would help overcome the limited visibility in some of the countries. Findings: Currently the challenges for financial stability in the Western Balkan area comprise non-performing loans, low capital adequacy and moderate growth of credit in the economy. The banking sector is reducing the debt due to required financial stability measures of the European banking authorities. As these countries integrate their financial institutions and markets into the European financial system, on the path towards harmonization of national and European legislation, cooperation between financial entities in the Western Balkans becomes very important. The Western Balkan countries are in a different stage of development of banking sustainability and supervision and because of that there is a need for more integration with the European Banks and the respective regulators to ensure an adequate banking regime. Practical Implications: The article highlights the fact that Western Balkan countries need to intensify their reforms to build banking sustainability in order to meet the criteria for EU membership. Originality/Value: With this article we show that the Western Balkan countries in their integration processes must first align their local and European legislation and requirements.peer-reviewe

Assessment to support the development of problem-solving goals in mathematics curricula 5-16

Current mathematics education policy perspectives in England, as well as in many other developed nations, privilege problem solving as a key 21st century skill (e.g. DfE, 2014; Kaur, 2014). Importantly, there is among the mathematics, mathematics education and end-user communities widespread embrace of problem solving as a centrally valued mathematical activity (e.g. ACME, 2011). However, English teachers and assessors often have limited experience of teaching for/assessing genuine problem solving, and performance in mathematics in England is high-stakes (Ofsted, 2012). Problem solving is therefore unlikely to be widely developed in classrooms unless summatively assessed at key points including GCSE, the standard English external assessment at age 16. A coherent curriculum system (Schmidt and Prawat, 2006) whereby intended curriculum, assessments, resources and teacher development are aligned and consistent, is key to supporting principled enactment (Golding, 2017). We report on a set of longitudinal efficacy studies which, among other intentions, evaluate the impact on teachers and students of a leading curriculum and assessment provider’s support for, and assessment of, problem solving for the 2014 Mathematics National Curriculum for 5-16 year olds (DfE, 2014). These are highly influential in England because they are widely adopted: the provider’s GCSE assessments at 16, for example, accounted for about two-thirds of all cohort entries in 2017. Key theoretical constructs used are those of performativity (Ball, 1994) and curriculum coherence (Schmidt and Prawat, 2006). Teacher interviews (n=452), student focus groups (n=172), classroom observations (n=101) and student survey responses (n~3300) over two early years of curriculum enactment show teachers and students perceive the approaches adopted in related curriculum materials and in the first set of provider GCSE examination papers not only employ highly valid assessment of, and approaches to, mathematical problem solving, but support that with provision of free surround materials specifically designed to build up students' ability to demonstrate related skills in summative timed assessments. However, we also evidence early and emerging constraints on both assessment and classroom enactment of problem solving in the curriculum: teacher skills and knowledge for related teaching across the range of students, teacher time and opportunity to harness the (additional or included) professional development opportunities provided with the resources, perceptions of superficial interpretations of ‘problem solving’ in national assessments at age 11, and pressures on schools and GCSE assessors to adopt enactments of ‘problem solving’ that are of limited validity, or for a subset of students only. Teachers attribute this to a) the challenges associated with defining an agreed meaning for mathematical problem solving and b) perceived in-school tensions between validly enacting that and meeting high-stakes performance measures. We discuss some implications

A pandemic summer: Impact on teaching and learning for mastery in Power Maths primary schools

We report on findings from a 2019-2021 study of use and impact of Power Maths, a ‘mastery’-oriented primary (R-year 6) resource. The study follows 40 classes of 2019-20 Power Maths-using year 1, 3 and 5 children and their teachers over two years, exploring teacher/pupil use and impact on learning. We report initial high-level findings. Summer 2020 study data serendipitously enabled us to understand aspects of teachers’ work over the pandemic period. Teachers reported particular challenges in addressing new areas requiring conceptual development, and inability to effectively develop children’s mathematical language or reasoning, or to monitor deep progress in mathematics learning. However, some children’s learning benefited from small group in-school provision, and others’ from more contextualised and less time-constrained ‘home schooling’. Tentatively, children returning to school often showed initially slow, but accelerating, recovery from confidence and learning loss

‘It’s been worth the effort’: Primary school teachers learning to teach mathematics remotely during the pandemic

We draw on Spring 2021 findings from a 2019-2022 study of impact and use of a ‘mastery’-oriented primary (ages 4-11) mathematics resource, ‘Power Maths’, in England. The study follows 40 classes of primary children and their teachers, in 20 schools, over two years. Our findings span the return into school from the early 2021 lockdown period, comparing and contrasting teachers’ approaches across the two pandemic-related lockdown periods, the first in March-June 2020. Most teachers developed a significantly wider range of, and confidence in, remote learning practices. They came to expect more, and active, new learning, rather than aiming just to consolidate prior knowledge. Many developed active selection of the most appropriate topics for home learning, substantially increased ‘live’ teaching, and found ways to more proactively monitor work. Despite this, some challenges persisted: providing effective formative assessment and insecure knowledge of parental support and of gaps in children’s learning

Covid 19: Impacts on teaching, learning and progression for A Levels in Mathematics.

We report on ways that teaching and learning for mathematics A Levels, studied pre-university in England (by students aged 16-18), was disrupted by Covid19 in Summer 2020. Findings are contextualised within teacher and student accounts of the aspirational and time-pressured nature of these reformed qualifications. We explore the nature of engagement with mathematics achieved by year 12 and 13 students during lockdown, and the preparedness of 2019-20 year 11 and 13 students for progression into A Level/Higher Education respectively. Our findings derive from the third year of a four-year study (2017/18 to 2020/21) exploring enactment and impact of reformed mathematics A Levels, and efficacy of associated Pearson resources and assessments. Research tools were adapted to focus on impacts of Covid19. We present a snapshot (March to July 2020), of teachers and students looking to the future in a time of uncertainty and rapid change

‘Hard to focus, difficult to learn’: Covid19 Impacts on teaching, learning and progression for A Levels in Mathematics

We explore year 13 (age 17-18) student accounts of how Covid19 has impacted their learning for pre-university mathematics qualifications in England. Findings derive from the final year of a four-year study (2017/18 to 2020/21) exploring enactment and impact of reformed mathematics ‘A Levels’, and efficacy of associated Pearson resources and assessments. Research tools were adapted to focus on impacts of Covid19. In this cohort’s first year of A level (2019/20), teaching and learning was severely disrupted. Teachers anticipated significant, wide-ranging learning gaps as students progressed to year 13. Using data from Autumn 2020 and Spring 2021 we analyse student accounts of how continued disruptions to teaching and learning have impacted them. Variable access to teachers, barriers to collaborative work, and challenges of remote or reduced contact working have resulted in reduced depth and breadth of learning. Additionally, many students reported negative impacts on mathematical confidence and wider mental health

Approximation and inference methods for stochastic biochemical kinetics-a tutorial review

Stochastic fluctuations of molecule numbers are ubiquitous in biological systems. Important examples include gene expression and enzymatic processes in living cells. Such systems are typically modelled as chemical reaction networks whose dynamics are governed by the chemical master equation. Despite its simple structure, no analytic solutions to the chemical master equation are known for most systems. Moreover, stochastic simulations are computationally expensive, making systematic analysis and statistical inference a challenging task. Consequently, significant effort has been spent in recent decades on the development of efficient approximation and inference methods. This article gives an introduction to basic modelling concepts as well as an overview of state of the art methods. First, we motivate and introduce deterministic and stochastic methods for modelling chemical networks, and give an overview of simulation and exact solution methods. Next, we discuss several approximation methods, including the chemical Langevin equation, the system size expansion, moment closure approximations, time-scale separation approximations and hybrid methods. We discuss their various properties and review recent advances and remaining challenges for these methods. We present a comparison of several of these methods by means of a numerical case study and highlight some of their respective advantages and disadvantages. Finally, we discuss the problem of inference from experimental data in the Bayesian framework and review recent methods developed the literature. In summary, this review gives a self-contained introduction to modelling, approximations and inference methods for stochastic chemical kinetics

Model Reduction for the Chemical Master Equation: an Information-Theoretic Approach

The complexity of mathematical models in biology has rendered model reduction an essential tool in the quantitative biologist's toolkit. For stochastic reaction networks described using the Chemical Master Equation, commonly used methods include time-scale separation, the Linear Mapping Approximation and state-space lumping. Despite the success of these techniques, they appear to be rather disparate and at present no general-purpose approach to model reduction for stochastic reaction networks is known. In this paper we show that most common model reduction approaches for the Chemical Master Equation can be seen as minimising a well-known information-theoretic quantity between the full model and its reduction, the Kullback-Leibler divergence defined on the space of trajectories. This allows us to recast the task of model reduction as a variational problem that can be tackled using standard numerical optimisation approaches. In addition we derive general expressions for the propensities of a reduced system that generalise those found using classical methods. We show that the Kullback-Leibler divergence is a useful metric to assess model discrepancy and to compare different model reduction techniques using three examples from the literature: an autoregulatory feedback loop, the Michaelis-Menten enzyme system and a genetic oscillator

Mind the gap: Mathematics teaching and learning in Power Maths primary schools in a pandemic autumn

We report Autumn 2020 findings from a 2019-2021 study of impact and use of a ‘mastery’-oriented primary (ages 4-11) mathematics resource, ‘Power Maths’. The study follows 40 classes of primary children and their teachers, in 20 schools, over two years. Following earlier pandemic evidence, more recent data show schools and teachers responding to Autumn ‘mathematics recovery’ challenges in very different ways, with a range of creativity, of solution-focus, and of alignment with the Power Maths-promoted ‘mastery’ approaches, although more complex mathematical processes commonly remained marginalised. Teachers reported that new classroom guidelines severely restricted ‘carpet’ and group work and use of manipulatives. They pervasively referenced identification and addressing of gaps in children’s prior learning. While most teachers expressed concern about the continuing impact on mathematical development, and reduction in confidence, they reported children usually still responding positively to mathematical opportunities to learn, and confidence slowly returning

Teaching and learning for ‘moving goal-posts’: reformed A Levels in mathematics

Reformed English pre-university mathematics ‘A levels’ feature enhanced content and renewed focus on mathematical reasoning and problem solving. Related assessments, at scale from 2019, had negligible piloting, and preparation time for resources and teaching was pressured, with teachers/assessors typically having little experience of teaching/assessing for the renewed foci. We used an institutional ethnographic lens to study the first 3 years’ enactment from the leading awarding organisation, and impact on students’ learning, affect and pathways. We followed students and teachers in a fairly representative sample of 46 classes, drawing on termly data collection. Initial ‘specimen assessments’ were largely considered valid and accessible; however, we evidence insecurity due to perceptions of ‘moving goal posts’. Early final assessments were perceived as significantly more demanding than predecessor comparators and of limited reliability for many students. We analyse contribution to knowledge around introduction of curriculum aspirations at this level and discuss ways to address identified challenges