Abacus, Vedic maths, or school maths: which one does your child actually need?

Walk through Amstelveen or Meerhoven on a Saturday morning and you will see it: Indian children heading to abacus class, certificates on the fridge, parents comparing levels. The abacus and Vedic maths academies are well established in the Netherlands' Indian communities and they are good at what they do. The question we get, usually a year in, is why a child with a level 6 abacus certificate has a level III in Cito rekenen or a 5 in MYP maths. The answer is not that abacus is bad. It is that abacus and school maths are different things, and only one of them is what the school measures.

What abacus classes build

An abacus programme teaches a child to calculate on a physical abacus and then on a mental image of it. Over two to four years a child learns to add, subtract, multiply and divide large numbers quickly in their head. Along the way the child builds concentration, working memory and confidence with numbers, and most children enjoy the belts-and-levels progression.

For a child between about 5 and 9 that is worth having. Fluent mental arithmetic makes every later topic easier, and the confidence matters. We see the benefit in children who come to us after two years of abacus: they are not afraid of numbers.

What Vedic maths builds

Vedic maths is a set of calculation shortcuts: multiplying numbers near 100, squaring numbers ending in 5, fast division by certain numbers, and so on. They are elegant and children like the feeling of a trick that works. They are also narrow. Each technique covers one situation, and they do not add up to an understanding of why multiplication works or how to use it in a problem.

What neither of them touches

School maths, in the Netherlands or in an international school, is mostly not calculation. Look at what the assessments actually measure.

• Dutch rekenen (groep 3 to 8). Context problems in Dutch, estimation, choosing a strategy and showing it, the ratio table, measurement and scale, reading tables and graphs. The Cito and IEP tests are almost entirely word problems, as we explain in Dutch primary maths groep by groep. A child who can multiply four-digit numbers mentally gets no credit for it there and loses marks for not showing the Dutch method.
• IB PYP and MYP. Reasoning, patterns, explaining, applying maths in real contexts; from MYP 4 a calculator is used freely. The MYP criteria B, C and D, which decide most of the grade, are about investigating and communicating, not computing.
• British and Cambridge schools. Method marks, problem solving and reasoning in every year, and from Year 9 a calculator paper.

So the skill that abacus and Vedic maths build is the skill that school maths, past about age 9, stops rewarding. That is the whole explanation for the certificate on the fridge next to the level III.

The pattern we see

A child does abacus from 5 to 8 and arrives in a Dutch groep 5 or a PYP phase 3 class fast at arithmetic and untrained in everything else: no estimation, no explaining, no experience of a word problem longer than one line, and often a resistance to writing working, because in their head the answer is already there. The school marks the working. The child is told to "show how you know" and does not know what that means. The abacus class continues because the child is good at it, and the school maths drifts.

This is not the abacus academy's fault. It is a mismatch between what the class builds and what the school measures, and it is the parents' job to see it. We wrote about the same mismatch with times tables in tafels the Dutch way.

How to decide, by age and situation

Age 5 to 7, school maths going fine. Abacus is a reasonable enrichment if the child enjoys it. Keep it to one session a week and make sure the school's own methods are being learnt alongside.

Age 7 to 9, school report says "doing fine" for a child who was ahead. This is the moment to add school maths at a stretch level in the school's programme, because the lead is being lost. Abacus can continue if there is time; it is not the fix.

Age 9 to 14, any school. School maths first. The reasoning, the methods and the explaining are what the next three years assess, and the calculation speed from abacus has already done its job. Vedic maths at this age is a hobby, and a fine one, but do not confuse it with preparation for the brugklas, MYP or IGCSE.

Any age, Cito level III or below in rekenen, or an MYP 5. Neither abacus nor Vedic maths will move that. Find out whether it is the language, the method or the maths, as we set out in Cito scores explained, and fix that.

If you can only choose one

School maths, in the programme the child is assessed on, taught by someone who knows that programme, with the reasoning and explaining built in from the first session. It is the less exciting choice and it is the one that changes the report. Costs and options are compared in what tutoring costs in the Netherlands.

We are not against abacus; several of our best students did it. We are against it standing in for the maths the school measures. The free placement demo takes 30 minutes and will show you, on the whiteboard, whether your child's arithmetic speed is being matched by the reasoning the school expects, and what to do if it is not.

Questions parents ask

See how we teach this, 1-on-1 online →