Standards of Arithmetic: How to correct the decline

Concern about standards of arithmetic in British schools is not new. As long ago as 1977 a survey of 8,000 sixteen year-olds by the institute of Mathematics showed significant weakness in basic computational skills with, for example, 25% of London’s sixteen year-old school children unable to multiply 6 by 79 even with a pencil and paper.

John Marks - Saturday, 26th October, 1996