http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/primaryeducation/7229107/Basic-sums-baffle-primary-teachers.htmlA test of simple maths skills taken by teachers from schools across the country has revealed a "shocking" lack of mental arithmetic ability and basic maths knowledge.
Only four out of 10 teachers could work out that 2.1 per cent of 400 is 8.4. Only a third knew that 1.4 divided by 0.1 is 14, and less than 50 per cent could work out that a half divided by a quarter is 2.
The results from 155 teachers in 18 schools, revealed in Channel 4's Dispatches programme, add to growing concerns about numeracy standards and teaching in England.
Almost a quarter of children are leaving primary school with a poor grasp of maths, even though spending on the subject is about £2.5 billion a year. Around 135,000 pupils start secondary school unable to cope with their courses.
Richard Dunne, a maths education specialist who set the test, said a generation of teachers did not fully understand the subject.
Alison Wolf, professor of public sector management at King's College, London, said: "I am actually horrified by the statistics.
"I really think that our obsession with generic teaching skills has crowded out time in which we could be making sure that people actually have the basic content and knowledge of content that they need.
"It doesn't mean that anybody who can do maths can teach maths, that is obviously not true - but I don't think you can teach maths if you can't do it."
The findings will fuel a political row over the qualifications needed to become a teacher. At present, the minimum maths requirement to train as a primary teacher is a grade C at GCSE.
Many teachers will not have studied the subject beyond that. The Tories plan to raise the grade to B.
The material covered in the Dispatches test is contained in the primary national curriculum, yet the programme found that only 54 per cent of teachers could work out the correct value of 1.12 x 2.2 (2.464), even when told that 112 x 22 = 2,464.
Mr Dunne said: "What we have are tests from 155 teachers which illustrate that probably more than half of them know so little maths that they cannot be conveying mathematics to their children in the classroom."
Failings in maths teaching will also be identified this week by a leading academic in a Royal Institution lecture.
Jo Boaler, professor of education at Sussex University, will say the children are being introduced to abstract concepts before they are ready, at age four and five.
She attributes Britain's lack of international standing in maths education, in part, to the attempt to teach 'too much, too soon'.
"We need to give primary teachers a few concepts so that four-, five- and six-year-olds are given a good base in understanding numbers, shapes, counting and sums," she said.
"Instead they are given a massive list of methods. In most EU countries, there is no formal learning of methods until children are age seven.
"When children in the UK find they don't understand, they are put in to lower sets and basically told 'You can't do maths.'
"In countries like Japan, China and Finland, which top the international league tables for maths, they believe all children should be able to do maths and are horrified by what we do here."
Fears were also raised last week that pupils at secondary school were not being prepared to study maths at higher levels because the GCSE was too easy.
The Children, Schools and Families Select Committee heard that maths papers were being 'dumbed down' and modular courses, which are now the norm, were making the situation worse.
Margaret Brown, a professor of maths education at King's College, London, told MPs: "There is competition between exam boards to make exams ever simpler.
"More modular exams, which can be taken again and again create a fail-safe and that is a problem."
A National Audit Office report, published in 2008, criticised weaknesses in teachers' knowledge of maths and backed calls for a big increase in the number of specialist primary maths teachers.
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