BBC – Staff Writer
“Thousands of primary schools in England are to be offered the chance to follow an Asian style of teaching maths. The government is providing £41m of funding to help interested schools to adopt this method, which is used in high performing places like Shanghai, Singapore and Hong Kong. The money will be available to more than 8,000 primary schools in England. This approach to maths is already used in some schools, but the cash means it can be taken up more widely. The Department for Education says the mastery approach to maths teaching, as it is known, involves children being taught as a whole class and is supported by the use of high-quality textbooks. Pupils are encouraged to physically represent mathematical concepts, so objects and pictures are used to demonstrate and visualise abstract ideas, alongside numbers and symbols.”(more)