The fact is that low-income countries are continually performing poorly in international numeracy or mathematics skills comparisons. Children in these countries don’t learn math, and often can’t even recognize basic numbers. Some more facts: • Low-income countries end up in the bottom end in global large-scale skill assessments such as TIMSS and PISA • The average student in lower-income countries performs worse than the 5th percentile in higher-income countries. If these children stay in school, they end up learning basic mathematics skills by grade 6, instead of grades 2 or 3. • Early grade assessments, like the Early Grade Mathematics Assessment (EGMA) have also shown that poor performance is often rooted in a failure to master basic mathematics competencies. • In one region of Morocco EGMA showed that 20% of grade 2 students could not solve basic addition problems and 44% could not solve basic subtraction problems (such as 4+2; 4-2) The 2011 Assessment Survey Evaluation Research (ASER) in India showed that close to 73% of students in rural India could not recognize numbers 1 – 9. This is a crisis. Not only a math crisis, but an education crisis. Why? Because basic numerical and mathematical skills are an important mechanism to further education and enable individuals to improve their job market potential. And these skills are just as important, for countries to develop the human capital needed for making advancements in science and technology, which are in turn important factors for economic development. These are facts, too. At the Global Partnership for Education we are working closely with our partners on early grade mathematics, and have made it part of our Strategic Plan 2012-2015 and our Global and Regional Activities program. We provide evidence-based best practice to our member countries so they can make the right policy decisions. More specifically, we: • support a network of organizations working on early grade mathematics and have created a virtual community of practice with experts interacting on issues around numeracy to exchange knowledge and best practice; • collect good evidence-based practices of early grade mathematics teaching, interventions, and assessments; • raise awareness about the numeracy emergency. Want to learn more about numeracy? Join a free webinar on how to improve students’ math performance in developing countries on Wednesday, 7 November, 2012 at 10 am EST Learn more • GPE Numeracy Webpage • Numeracy for Development Community of Practice • Join Our Upcoming Webinar on Numeracy on 7 November 2012