According to the British Cockroft Committee, a numerate person should:

be 'at-ease' with all those aspects of mathematics that enable a person to cope with the practical demands of everyday life have the ability to understand information presented in mathematical terms.

Numeracy / What is it?, Curriculum Support website, available at http://www.curriculumsupport.education.nsw.gov.au/primary/mathematics/numeracy/what/index.htm)

One of the teachers interviewed for this edition of the Australian Government Quality Teacher Programme newsletter made an important observation about the teaching of numeracy in schools:

It's everyone's business, not something that is confined to mathematics syllabuses.

Educational research and a groundswell of classroom practice are demonstrating that opportunities for the development of students' numeracy skills can be found right across the curriculum. The three Australian Government Quality Teacher Programme projects featured in this newsletter illustrate different professional development strategies that schools may use to deepen teachers' knowledge of the area, and strengthen their classroom practice.

At Kambala, an Anglican school for girls, ICT was shown to be a valuable mechanism, not just for classroom based numeracy learning activities, but also for teachers' professional development. The work of a small project team was made accessible via the school's intranet so that the team's professional learning is now having a flow on effect to other faculties in the school.

The project team at Sir Joseph Banks High School, Revesby, adopted a whole school approach to the introduction of numeracy learning activities across faculties. Building on a model that had proven successful at the school for improving students' literacy and ICT skills, the team devised a strategy that included workshops at a staff development day and a whole school agreement on the way forward. One team member acted as project mentor, and worked with faculty representatives in creating new and reviewing existing units of work to find opportunities for teaching numeracy.

Building on something that had been done before was also the approach taken at Our Lady of Lebanon College at Harris Park. Professional development for the well known numeracy program, Count Me In Too, was initially conducted by the Mathematics team from the Curriculum K—12 Directorate, NSW Department of Education and Training. Later, four teachers attended externally provided Count Me In Too training courses. From those experiences, a K—3 school team was established to take carriage of the program's implementation, and actively share professional learning among the school's K—3 teachers. Training for parent volunteers who work on the program with students in classrooms is also an aspect of the team's strategy.

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