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Encouraging year 6 pupils to work at maths on their own is obviously helpful – providing of course that one can be sure they are making progress rather than repeating the same mistakes over and over again.

It is with this in mind that we have designed our ‘self marking’ mental arithmetic tests.

This approach (based on the successful Whole School Mental Arithmetic Programme) allows pupils to work on their own and at their own speed, while at the same time ensuring that they are making progress.

An average of 18.6 per cent of 15-year olds in the UK fail to read at the level at which they can “understand, use and reflect on written texts”, according to the last Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) tests.

The recent Eurydice report (which analyses education systems and policies across 33 European countries) suggests that the best way to improve present reading standards is for primary literacy lessons to have a greater emphasis in reading comprehension.

In terms of comprehension, take this classic short poem:

“Algy met a bear,

Many people believe that if anyone actually did invent the notion of “Times Tables” it was probably Pythagoras (570 to 495 BC). Indeed, in many languages what in English is called the Times Tables is called the Table of Pythagorus.

But the best we can say for Pythagoras is that he may have re-invented the tables, because mathematical tables containing multiplications can be found dating from 1900 BC in Babylonian clay tablets.

One of the great problems with mental arithmetic tests (as with most kinds of formalised assessment) is that the results can be warped, due to the fact that many children will do less well within a test setting than when faced with a more commonplace classroom experience.

However there is a way to overcome this problem – and the solution is fairly straightforward.

Why not visit us at the Education Show 2012 to see a range of our products and buy at the best possible prices? We will be on hand to give advice and receive any suggestions for new products you wish to make.

One of the best things about Christmas time for me is to see the school hall and classrooms decorated with the children’s displays.

I don’t think there’s anything better to get you in the Christmas spirit than to walk into the hall every day to see the pupils’ work on display.

When it comes to decorating classrooms and halls for Christmas, there are two schools of thought.

One says that it is a good idea to put up the same (or at least a similar) display each year, so that children become familiar with and feel at ease with the decorations that each room will have.

One of the biggest problems within key stage one is the different levels of ability and development that children within one class can have. This makes trying to evolve a unified strategy towards spellings very difficult.

Indeed it is a problem that continues throughout the school. By the time these children get to Year 6 there can be an even bigger difference in the reading and spelling ability of the pupils in the class.

So how do you know exactly which list of spellings each pupil needs?

See us live at the TES Special Needs London Friday 14th and Saturday 15th October 2011, Business Design Centre, LOndon for 'extra special' offers.

It is interesting to note that one of the most effective ways of getting children to be creative and original in their story writing is simply to ask the children to be creative and original.

I was really quite surprised when I watched the experiment being done – but I was also disappointed in the results.

Two doctors recently wrote a couple of workbooks which encouraged primary school pupils to explore their feelings as they learnt about the bodily changes associated with the onset of puberty.

I was so impressed by the books I decided to publish them. Here’s the details…

The first workbook - All About Me (Just for girls!) answers questions such as ‘When do I need to wear a bra?’ and ‘What is a period?’ Friendly problem pages discuss issues such as ‘mood swings’ and ‘size of breasts’.