Westpac offers $99 maths app free to students

WESTPAC is celebrating its 200th birthday with a gift to maths-challenged students — a free app to boost numeracy.

Rosemary Lu, April McCarney and Lara Griffiths at Brigidine College in St Ives. Picture: Stephen Cooper

ONE of Australia’s big four banks is aiming to boost child numeracy by offering students free access to a groundbreaking maths app.

Westpac is making available maths development app Mathspace to ensure children learn skills that will be useful to them in the future.

The bank’s chief executive Brian Hartzer said it was vital for children to tackle maths head-on — and has first-hand experience of how daunting youngsters can find the subject.

“I’ve got four daughters and the one thing they talk about in school as being a challenge is maths,” Mr Hartzer told The Saturday Telegraph. “For at least two of my daughters, maths has been very stressful.”

Year 7 students at Brigidine College at St Ives check out Mathspace.

The app offer is a present to the nation to mark Westpac’s 200th birthday today, and an acknowledgment that success in maths can open doors later in life.

“One of the issues that Australia has, as many countries do, is how do you increase numeracy in the population,” Mr Hartzer said.

Mathspace was designed in Sydney and is based on the school curriculum. It can replace a textbook but is interactive and tailored to the student, and is already used in Hong Kong, Britain and the United States.

Westpac is covering the cost of each $99 download of the app. And for each child who signs up for the premium program and completes the quizzes and tasks, the bank will refund into a Westpac account the $10 weekly subscription fee.

Mr Hartzer, who admits that as a child he was no “maths genius”, worked through part of the Year 12 Mathspace program earlier this week.

“It’s not just quizzes where you do multiple choice and got it right or got it wrong, it actually talks you through, what are the steps. And there’s these little videos. It’s fantastic,” he said.

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It is already proving a hit with students.

“It’s better than other maths programs as it’s a better website,” Brigidine College’s Lara Griffiths, 12, said.

“It’s personalised to your own level of maths and if you get stuck on a question there’s a video there to guide you through it.”