Government plans to train army of maths teachers

In a bid to raise maths standards in primary schools, Balls said specialist maths teachers would be paid £8,000 to train towards gaining a masters in maths teaching.

The government will invest £24m over the next three years to put in place a training programme for the existing 13,000 primary school teachers.

The announcements were made to coincide with a review of maths in primary schools, carried out by Sir Peter Williams, which called for a shift to reverse the can’t do attitude towards maths.

Williams recommends that learning about numbers and shapes should be rooted in play and that children should do more mental maths in the classroom.

But Michael Gove, the shadow secretary for education, said: The review fails to grasp the seriousness of the state of maths education in this country.

This is a lost opportunity to improve how we teach maths. The review should have done for maths what the Rose review did for reading, but the government has failed to grasp the nettle and replace methods of teaching that have failed with tried and tested methods used in countries that have much higher levels of maths achievement.