Issues in the teaching and learning of arithmetic

Any inquiry into arithmetic in contemporary mathematics education seems to be at once undercut by the terms used in the content of statutory and non-statutory government policy documents, since it is these that are inevitably most used by teachers. Scarcely any mention of ‘arithmetic’ is made in either the National Curriculum for England (DfEE/QCA, 1999) or in The National Numeracy Strategy (DfEE, 1998) (which is concerned with raising levels of achievement in primary school pupils, and is currently being extended into Key Stage 3 (DfEE, 2000)). The key words in these documents are either ‘number’ or ‘numeracy’.