WALLYFORD Primary School headteacher Mhairi Stratton has been invited to the United States to talk about her cutting-edge work with children in East Lothian.

Mrs Stratton, who has been in charge at the school for more than two years, is at the forefront of a strategy which uses research into child development to create a new approach to teaching numbers.

It has led to the launch of numeracy academies where schools and local authorities come together to train teachers to be champions of the new approach.

The academies have proved so successful that the Scottish Government has set aside funding to roll them out across the country.

Mrs Strachan trained, as a newly qualified teacher, in maths recovery, a specialised programmed based on research into child development.

The programme aims to help teachers intervene when early numeracy education has gone wrong with young children; however, Mrs Stratton wanted to use the strategy in a different way.

She said: “I did not want to recover children, I wanted to use it from the start to ensure they did not need an intervention.” The maths recovery strategies involve using research to understand how children develop and relate it to helping build a relationship between them and numbers.

It focuses more on helping children work out the answers for themselves than memorising tables and equations.

Mrs Stratton said: “This is about a systematic change in our approach to teaching children and giving teachers the confidence in numeracy.

“It is about taking away the fear of being wrong and of numbers, and challenging children to solve problems themselves.” The numeracy academies are now in their fourth year in East Lothian and more teachers are being trained in the new techniques each time.

And the strategy is working at Wallyford Primary School, where youngsters have demonstrated an ability to think for themselves and take on the challenges.

When Mrs Stratton arrived at the school nearly five years ago, children leaving for secondary school were judged to have Phase Four numeracy skills; now most of them are at Phase Seven.

The success of the programme led to Mrs Stratton and a team of teachers from East Lothian receiving an invitation to speak at the Maths Recovery National Conference in Raleigh, North Carolina, in October.

She said: “I gave a presentation in Glasgow and was invited by the Maths Recovery Council in the United States to go and talk about it there. There is a team of us going out and I am looking forward to the experience.”