CHILDREN who are English speakers cannot compete with their Asian-language counterparts when it comes to learning how to count above 10, says the head of maths curriculum for the NSW Department of Education.
As a result, early-childhood teachers will be trained to provide extra support for native English speakers, whose progress in maths may be at a disadvantage because of the way the English language is structured.
Peter Gould, the chief education officer for mathematics at the department, said children of both English and Asian-language backgrounds were on par when it came to learning to count from one to 10, but language differences made counting from 11 to 20 and above more difficult for English speakers.
Children had difficulty grasping the words 11, 20 and "teen" words such as 15. This was because there was no logical connection with the word 11 and the words 10 and one, and because 15 does not incorporate the words five and 10.
In contrast, Asian languages based on ancient Chinese did not introduce any new words for numbers above 10. For example, 11 was spoken as "ten one", 12 as "ten two" and 20 as "two-tens".
Although the difference in the way the languages were spoken could create future learning problems for English speakers, Mr Gould said it did not fully explain why children of Asian background generally performed better than their Australian counterparts in the selective schools test. Cultural differences in attitudes towards learning played a more significant role in determining that success.
The State Government recently introduced a new early-childhood learning strategy which is introducing literacy and numeracy testing for kindergarten children.
Mr Gould said learning to count was more important educationally than learning the alphabet.
"Learning to count is more challenging and powerful in terms of what it enables a child to do," he said.
