Into the second year of secondary school with a sigh of relief. The dreaded first year at big school is successfully behind us. We are immediately brought down to earth by the discovery that our 12-year old can do neither long division nor multiply a three-figure number by a two-figure one without the help of a calculator. Checking with his friends I found that he was not alone.

This unexpected state of affairs was revealed by a maths teacher, bless her, who set homework on percentages to be done without recourse to a calculator.

I blame the bloated national curriculum at primary level. Not the teachers, our primary school teachers are a dedicated bunch.

By the age of eight the children were writing little notes on the computer. Wonderful, we thought. Then came the topics: Egyptians, Romans, Vikings, Normans, Stuarts, pond life, insects, mammals, sound waves, medieval building techniques, the geography of remote Scottish islands. Secondary school stuff, we thought.

At parents’ evenings, the teachers appealed for help and encouragement at home. We’ve only got one term on this topic, they would tell us, we’ve got to keep up with the national curriculum.

In this wealth of subjects, basic arithmetic seems to have taken a back seat. Of course the children were taught division and multiplication on paper. After that they used calculators.

Using a calculator does not allow young children to build up a common-sense approach to numbers. To take one of the examples which baffled our 12-year old: both his father and I can see, just by looking, that 57 goes into 213 a little under 4 times, and therefore that 57 will be just over 25 per cent of 213. Forever pressing the percentage key on the calculator seems to have robbed our son of this element of common sense. Nonsensical answers ring no alarm bells in his mind. 0.268 per cent or 26.8 per cent, what’s the difference? It’s just a figure to be copied down in his maths book, neatly and with application.

As a parent, I would like to see more time spent on basic maths together with a ban on calculators in primary schools.

One day our children will have to cope with pay, insurance, benefits or mortgages, not to mention the demands of employers. It is just not fair to turn them loose in the world with no idea of what numbers actually mean.

Madeleine McDonald is a freelance writer living in Hornsea, Humberside