Posted on Wednesday 27th July 2011 Professor Carole Torgerson
from the School of Education, has led a major evaluation of
Every Child Counts (ECC), a numeracy programme that was
introduced into English primary schools in 2008. The evaluation
project, conducted by Researchers from the Universities of
Birmingham, Durham and York for the Department for Education,
has shown a positive short term effect on children’s numeracy
skills and equated the improvement to seven additional weeks’
progress in numeracy skills for each child. Every Child Counts
(through the Numbers Count intervention) provides intensive
support to the lowest-achieving Year 2 children. Children are
taught on a one-to-one basis by a specialist teacher for half an
hour a day over the course of a term. The programme is currently
being provided to over 20,000 children in about 1700 schools. A
randomised controlled trial (RCT) involving 409 children in 44
schools across England assessed the effect of receiving Numbers
Count (NC) teaching compared wi