Teachers' Role

Numeracy education is every teacher’s responsibility. The key to successfully addressing numeracy across the curriculum is for teachers to understand the mathematical demands of the work they set students, the potential difficulties of the numeracy aspects students may experience and knowledge of various strategies to assist students.

The NSW Department of Education, Numeracy K-12 Policy describes the role of teachers in developing students’ numeracy skills across key learning areas. The policy specifies that school and state numeracy data be used to guide teaching programs and to obtain information about each student’s numeracy achievement for reporting. According to the policy, teachers are to identify and support the specific numeracy demands of the Key Learning Areas leading to knowledge, skills and understandings in:

• Mental computation and numerical reasoning
• Patterning, generalisation and algebraic reasoning
• Applying measurement strategies
• Spatial visualisation and geometric reasoning
• Data analysis, including tables
• Graphical representation and analysis

Quality Teaching Framework