“It is shocking that more than one fifth of primary school children start secondary school without a firm grasp of basic maths.”

“There are nearly 4 million primary school children in England and this means that some 830,000 of them have poor numeracy skills. Even worse, 90 per cent of these pupils will never catch up, severely limiting their future prospects.”

“It does not help that teachers’ subject knowledge is not strong enough. Unfortunately, it will be 2019 before the government’s 13,000 specialist maths teachers are all in the classroom. How many children will have fallen into a lifetime’s struggle with numeracy in the meantime? The government needs to do much better than this.”

Mr Bacon was speaking as the Commons public accounts committee published its report on mathematics performance in primary schools. In 2008, 79 per cent of pupils met the Government’s expected standard at Key Stage 2 (age 11) in national tests, well short of the Department for Children, Schools and Families’ target of 85 per cent by 2006. This means that 21 per cent of pupils – over one in five – are starting secondary school without a secure foundation in mathematics.

The report also finds that in 2007, only 10 per cent of pupils who had not reached the expected standard by the end of primary school went on to achieve at least grade C in GCSE Mathematics at age 16.

In 2007, the Department commissioned Sir Peter Williams to undertake an independent review of the quality of primary mathematics teaching. Sir Peter’s review, published in June 2008, found that nationally teacher subject knowledge was not good enough and the Department accepted his principal recommendation that 13,000 specialist mathematics teachers should be trained by 2019. .