An ambitious city-wide programme to raise numeracy levels in schools is being developed by Dundee City Council
Teachers from primary and secondary schools will be given training to standardise the teaching of maths in a bid to raise attainment levels.
They will also be given clear targets so they know what level of numeracy a pupil should have attained by a specific age.
Lina Waghorn, Dundee City Council’s head of service for early learning, primary education, arts and culture, said a similar scheme had been successful in helping to raise literacy levels.
She told the children and families services committee: “We have made good progress in literacy but not quite as good in numeracy.
“We adopted a city-wide approach to literacy but decided not to do that for numeracy.
“We decided to do city-wide training so everyone is trained the same way but we didn’t do that with numeracy. Instead we allowed schools to use the resources they thought best.
“But what we are going to do is take all the evidence and good practice we achieved in literacy and apply the same approach to numeracy so there will be the same approach from ages two to 18.”
Ms Waghorn added: “There will be a clear pathway so every teacher will know the stage a pupil should be at.”
The committee heard Dundee has made progress in improving both literacy and numeracy, but literacy levels have been improving more.
Head of education Paul Clancy said Dundee is succeeding in closing the attainment gap but there is a still a long road to travel.
He said: “Literacy is outperforming numeracy and that follows a national trend.”
Mr Clancy added that a greater number of pupils now attain basic literacy and numeracy at SCQF, the equivalent of the old general Standard Grade.
In 2015/16 86% of pupils reached this standard, compared to just 71.5% in 2011/12.
Children and families services convener Stewart Hunter said: “The report was quite positive about the progress being made but we are not quite there yet with numeracy.
“It is something we’ve been looking at for quite some while.
“It means we will have to do a lot of work in teacher training but we did that with literacy and it made a huge difference.”
