Marjon goes international to boost confidence of maths teachers and parents

Released: 08.01.18

Marjon’s Education team is joining forces with 10 partners from six different countries as part of a three year EU-funded project to help improve the numeracy skills of school children through giving teachers more confidence and competence in teaching methods.  

The recently released National Numeracy report (2017) ‘Numeracy and Financial Capability: Exploring the links, indicates that 18.5m adults, nearly half the UK working-age population, have ‘poor’ or ‘low’ numeracy and that teaching of the subject needs to be tackled particularly at primary level to buck the trend.

Marjon will take the lead on strands within the Erasmus Plus funded project, drawing on lessons learnt from international comparisons, showing that school environment, professional development and parental engagement are vital to building both teacher and pupil confidence in improving attainment in maths.    

Gill Golder explains, “The aim of the project is to provide an innovative approach to the development of the teaching of mathematics which can be applied to initial teacher education and early professional development.

“We’ll focus on supporting teachers in developing these new approaches and develop guidelines for its implementation.

“The ultimate goal is to produce teachers who are confident in teaching maths so they can develop pupils’ fluency in calculating, solving problems and reasoning about numbers.

“This in turn will give the pupils more confidence and allow them to enjoy mathematics more.

“It’s fantastic to be involved in such a far-reaching project which will add up to better maths skills all round, for teachers, pupils and parents.”