national numeracy strategy

In 2006 Borthwick and Harcourt-Heath decided to explore mathematical methods used by children who had been educated since the introduction of the National Numeracy Strategy (NNS). They considered how far teaching had moved forward since then and also whether children were using a range of strategies and examined what they were. They analysed the responses of 995 year five children from 22 schools throughout Norfolk on four questions, one each of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. For addition, as there was no ‘bridging’ involved they felt unable to draw any conclusions about the effectiveness of the standard algorithm compared to other methods. With subtraction they found a greater proportion of correct versus incorrect answers when using the number line (13% vs. 2%) compared with using the standard algorithm (10% vs. 9%). With multiplication, the vast majority of children chose to use the grid method, which proved to give the highest proportion of correct answers. They considered that an even spread of methods from all categories were used to answer the division question. The authors were most struck by the high number of incorrect answers for all operations except addition. They concluded that, “when children use a strategy, based on mental methods, they usually reach the correct solution” (Borthwick & Harcourt-Heath, 2007). They also noted that there were a number of children in the survey who seemed unable to draw on any strategies, and it was thus apparent to them that mental methods had not been taught.

When the NNS Framework was published in 1999, one of the features mentioned was “an ability to calculate accurately and efficiently, both mentally and with pencil and paper, drawing on a range of calculation ...

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