The best free website' for Maths - The Times recommends NRICH

The Times has described our NRICH programme as 'the best free website' in a guide for parents about secondary maths education, published on Monday 23rd January 2012, compiled with the help of headteachers.

In the guide, The Times singles out NRICH as the focus of an article titled 'The best free website: how to use NRICH', saying 'One online resource is proving there are ways to offer extra maths that don't engender the groan factor.'

The article explores how NRICH encourages creative approaches to thinking and problem solving, and how it aims, in the words of Charlie Gilderdale, NRICH Secondary Co-ordinator, to "produce resourceful risk takers - people who can keep working through a problem, looking at it from different angles, until they can work out a solution".

Smoothing the way through the maths syllabus is not always helpful, as Charlie Gilderdale points out. "If a Scout leader decided to take his troop on a mountain hike, but told them simply to get in a line and follow him while he read the map, he wouldn’t be teaching them anything other than how to be good followers. As governments, manufacturers and entrepreneurs all tell us, we need people who are able to do things for themselves, and are prepared to take the lead."

The engaging problems and resources on the NRICH site are all freely available and are proving a huge success with teachers, students and parents. All three groups are catered for on the site, which attracted more than 2.9 million visits, and over 16 million pageviews, in the last academic year alone.

Read the full article in The Times online (note that this is only accessible behind the paywall).