Plans to give struggling children intensive one-on-one numeracy training in the hope of making British standards comparable to the best in the world will be outlined today by Gordon Brown.

More university students will be brought into classrooms to help with tuition and extra incentives will be offered to encourage more mathematics teachers and trainees to work in primary schools. Parents will also be involved in a campaign to ensure that every child is numerate by the time he or she leaves primary school.

The proposals are aimed at giving one-on-one training to 300,000 struggling pupils a year by 2010. The programme will cost £600 a year for each child considered most at risk of leaving school without numeracy skills. The highly intensive support plans will cost an extra £35 million a year of new money, on top of £150 million a year earmarked in the Budget for less intensive one-on-one tuition.

The programme will involve 30 to 40 hours of one-on-one tuition a year for those most in need. For those just starting to fall behind there will be ten hours of tuition.

On the fifth day of his leadership campaign Mr Brown will tell the Confederation of British Industry that although numeracy standards have improved since 1999 about 150,000 children a year are not numerate when they leave school. Mr Brown will say that Britain is some way off being world-class and that a strong economy and inclusive society “require a fully numerate population”.

Describing education as a “personal passion”, he will call for “a sharper focus on standards and getting the basics right – with every child able to read, write and add up before they leave primary school”.

He will report on the success of the “every child a reader” programme in raising literacy standards, by targeting the 300,000 children most at risk of falling behind with intensive one-on-one tuition to help them learn to read. He will announce a matching programme on numeracy, to be named “every child counts” and designed in consultation with maths teachers.

The aim is to build on the introduction of the national numeracy strategy in 1999. The number of 11-year-olds reaching the expected level has risen from 62 per cent to 76 per cent; an extra 83,000 pupils reached the standard in 2006.

There are now 24,000 maths specialists teaching in maintained schools and twice as many trainee maths teachers as in 1998-99.

Mr Brown will say: “I believe the time is now right fundamentally to review how we teach numeracy and to set out a plan for ensuring that every child is numerate by the time they leave primary school.”

The review will measure Britain against those nations who are world leaders in bringing children up to the mark and set out to improve continuous training for teachers.

In the latest international comparisons in 2003 for the maths scores for pupils aged 9 to 10, England came tenth, the most improved nation since the previous comparisons in 1995 and ahead of the United States, Italy and Australia. Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan headed the list.

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