ABSTRACT
Mental arithmetic (or mental calculation) has long been an established part of the mathematics curriculum. In the 1990s, however, there has been an increasing emphasis on the place of mental methods of calculating at primary school level. The work of the National Numeracy Strategy (NNS), and a series of curriculum documents and research findings (see, for example, Askew and Wiliam, 1995; Askew, 1998; SCAA, 1997) have explored the place of what is now termed mental mathematics in numeracy development. This term includes more than just mental arithmetic, as is explained in the following sections.
