MATHS HAS a reputation for being the subject that students hate. It’s not uncommon to hear “I hate maths” or “maths is too hard” from students who are struggling.

Primary school maths teacher Isaac Anoom has won a reputation amongst students, parents, and school staff across the UK for his innovative approach to sharpening the maths skills of students.

Anoom is better known as Mr Numbervator, a colourful character he developed created and designed to teach numbers and maths.

As Mr Numbervator, Anoon has written and presented maths programmes on ITV, BBC 1 and Teachers TV.  He’s also won a ‘Teacher of The Year Award’ and plaudits from the likes of former education secretary David Blunkett. 

It was Anoom’s passion for making maths fun and engaging for pupils that the idea for creating the Mr Numbervator character sprang from.

“Back in the late 90s the headteacher at a school in Brent where I taught maths allowed me to run a series of after-school meetings based on maths. He wanted to raise the profile of the subject in the school. 

“One day, while doing a lesson with a Year 1 class,  I decided I was going to stick numbers all over my clothes,” Anoom recalls. “I wanted to make the lesson visual and interactive. I saw the way the children were pointing and looking, and really enjoying the lesson. 

One child said, ‘Look, it’s the number man’. I didn’t like the name number man, because it seemed to exclude women. So I’ve thought about the word numbervator. The name worked and that’s how I created Mr. Numbervator.”

News of his innovative approach quickly spread and led to an offer of presenting a Saturday morning maths show on ITV as Mr Numbervator.

Anoom’s passion for engaging young people with maths is behind his latest project, the launch of a new maths comic.  

The venture was inspired by his work as a teacher at a school in Enfield. Anoom realised that because the reading levels of the students were so poor, their ability to understand mathematical concepts would also be limited. 

“Children love comics, they love superheroes. If we could combine what they like with learning through reading at the same time, that for me is the way forward” he says.

He worked on the idea for a three year period until its launch this year. The first edition called Mr Numbervator, Equivalent Fractions has been distributed to schools Anoom works with through his consultancy. New editions will be produced each half term. 

“What I want to be very clear about is that the comic is fun but it’s real teaching” he says. “All I’ve done with the comic is to take the objectives and key learning outcomes laid out by the government so I’m following expectations and being creative with them. So the characters in the comic are children who teach other children maths as superhero mathematicians.

“One of the characters is a young black girl who’s the cleverest girl in the world when it comes to maths. A lot of girls saw the comic and said ‘I want to be like her’ because they liked her hair and the fact that everyone respected her because of her maths ability. Mr Numbervator is still in the story but it’s the children who actually deliver the maths.”

The birth  of the comic coincides with another of Anoom’s new projects that marks a first. Earlier this year he launched a weekly maths phone-in show called The Maths Show with Mr Numbervator on the north-west London based Chalkhill Community Radio Station.

So far, callers have rung in from Zambia, Ghana, America, Spain, Scotland, Sweden and of course here in the UK.

“There’s a lot of parents out there who can’t afford private tuition but their children have got a right to a good maths education” he says. “That’s why I started my radio show.  Families who perhaps haven’t got the means to hire a tutor can get lessons free on the radio.

“Children call in. If they’ve got a problem with percentages, decimals or fractions for example they can ask me a question. And then I teach them how to do it live on the radio.”