Parents, teachers and young learners can now explore hundreds of free and engaging maths resources in one place – thanks to the newly launched Amazon Maths4All storefront.
With many schools around the country either closed or running at restricted capacity in recent months due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw the need to provide further support for parents juggling childcare and homeschooling, helping children catch up and keep learning through summer holidays, as well as supporting teachers looking for quick and easy ways to share online resources.
Maths4All is designed to address this challenge by providing a selection of free, curriculum-linked maths worksheets, apps and games to complement work done at school and help primary school students become more engaged and confident in the subject.
The resources have been created in collaboration with a host of expert partners, including academics at leading universities such as the University of Cambridge’s Millennium Maths Project and University College London’s ScratchMaths. Other content creators include Mathematics in Education and Industry (MEI), NRICH, White Rose Maths, Times Table Rock Stars and CGP Books.
Maths resources: what’s on offer and why?
The Maths4All storefront is designed to help parents, teachers and young learners find free, curriculum-linked learning resources from trusted sources – all in one place.
Doug Gurr, UK Country Manager, Amazon, says: “As the foundation for an increasing number of jobs in our digital age, numeracy is more important than ever before. At the same time, a shortfall in numeracy skills is having an impact on career opportunities for individuals, as well as the wider economy.”
“As a group of parents at Amazon who are passionate about education, we wanted to bring parents, charities and educational institutions together to provide easily accessible help and resources,” Doug adds.
Dipika Sawhney, Senior Programme Manager, Maths4All at Amazon, added: “There’s no shortage of maths resources currently available, but we understand that it can be difficult to identify the very best resources that are expert-approved and curriculum-linked. We have partnered with a variety of award-winning institutions and charities to ensure we are providing for free a range of world-class resources to suit the individual needs of all children at this challenging time.”
We really do need to help people to be more comfortable with maths. That’s why I’m so excited to be working with Amazon to make quality learning resources more accessible!
The materials include worksheets, games, apps and Amazon Alexa skills. These are downloadable and presented in an easily digestible format to ensure young learners can work at their own pace to build confidence with the subject.
NumBots, for example, gamifies key concepts and theories in order to make the subject more enticing, while PrimaryLeap provides activity sheets, workbooks and interactive tools that are designed to support delivery of the UK Primary School Curriculum.
Promoting numeracy in the digital age
Research from National Numeracy has highlighted the urgent need for a new approach to numeracy across society. The education charity found that low numeracy costs UK employers around £3.2bn each year.
In addition, it was reported that nearly half of all working-age adults in the UK have the numeracy level of a primary school child, while three quarters of working-age adults would struggle to pass a maths GCSE.
Professor Dame Celia Hoyles – a leading British mathematician and Professor of Mathematics Education at the Institute of Education, University College London (UCL) – teamed up with Amazon on Maths4All.
“There is still a stigma associated with maths as a subject, so many just run away from it,” explains Prof Hoyles, “but an appreciation of maths and numeracy is critical in everyday life, as well providing the building blocks for a wide range of subjects and professions. We really do need to help people to be more comfortable with maths. That’s why I’m so excited to be working with Amazon to make quality learning resources more accessible! And the same goes for computing of course. I am delighted that our ScratchMaths resources around programming and mathematics are now available through Maths4All.”
Prof Hoyles and her colleagues at the UCL Knowledge Lab produced UCL ScratchMaths after working closely with young children and their teachers. “The content is designed for children to access key mathematical concepts alongside some central ideas in programming and to do this in a meaningful and enjoyable way. ScratchMaths complements what they might be doing at school, so they better understand what mathematics is all about - while enjoying the process.”
How does Amazon support maths education?
Amazon is dedicated to helping young people build practical and relevant skills for their futures and has created multiple initiatives to serve this purpose. We also believe that these opportunities should be open for everyone, regardless of age or background. At Amazon, numeracy is vital for our workforce of builders, inventors and innovators. From online shopping suggestions to Fulfilment Centres and delivery routes, numeracy underpins every stage of your Amazon order. Earlier this year we were delighted to act as a lead supporter for National Numeracy Day, an annual nationwide event that helps to reframe attitudes and abilities around numeracy in everyday life. Take the National Numeracy Challenge today to gauge your numeracy levels!
We have also collaborated with the British Science Association to hold STEM workshops for British Science Week, inviting more than 1,200 pupils from local schools to our Fulfilment Centres to get a behind-the-scenes look at how technology, numeracy and computer science underpin every stage of your Amazon order.
To support computer science learning from childhood-to-career, last year we launched Amazon Future Engineer with free learning resources for primary, secondary and post-16 education.
Find out more about how Amazon is supporting education.