Calculators are to be banned in maths tests for 11-year-olds from 2014, the government has announced.
Education and childcare minister Elizabeth Truss said that pupils were using calculators "too much and too soon" at primary school and that they were not getting a "rigourous grounding" in mental and written arithmetic as a result.
There are currently three maths tests at the end of key stage 2, one of which allows calculators.
Example test questions which allow a calculator include: “Tickets for a school play cost £2.75 each. Dev sold 23 tickets. How much money did Dev collect?"
The draft primary Programme of Study, published last year, says that calculators should not be introduced until late primary and should be used for activities such as converting a simple fraction to a decimal fraction.
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