The School Mathematics Project arose in the United Kingdom as part of the

new mathematics New Mathematics or New Math was a dramatic but temporary change in the way mathematics was taught in American grade schools, and to a lesser extent in European countries and elsewhere, during the 1950s1970s. Curriculum topics and teaching pract ...

educational movement of the 1960s. It is a developer of mathematics textbooks for

secondary school A secondary school describes an institution that provides secondary education and also usually includes the building where this takes place. Some secondary schools provide both '' secondary education, lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) ...

s, formerly based in

Southampton Southampton () is a port city in the ceremonial county of Hampshire in southern England. It is located approximately south-west of London and west of Portsmouth. The city forms part of the South Hampshire built-up area, which also covers Po ...

in the UK. Now generally known as SMP, it began as a research project inspired by a 1961 conference chaired by Bryan Thwaites at the

University of Southampton , mottoeng = The Heights Yield to Endeavour , type = Public research university , established = 1862 – Hartley Institution1902 – Hartley University College1913 – Southampton University Coll ...

, which itself was precipitated by calls to reform mathematics teaching in the wake of the

Sputnik Sputnik 1 (; see § Etymology) was the first artificial Earth satellite. It was launched into an elliptical low Earth orbit by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957 as part of the Soviet space program. It sent a radio signal back to Earth for t ...

launch by the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

, the same circumstances which prompted the wider

New Math New Mathematics or New Math was a dramatic but temporary change in the way mathematics was taught in American grade schools, and to a lesser extent in European countries and elsewhere, during the 1950s1970s. Curriculum topics and teaching pract ...

movement. It maintained close ties with the former Collaborative Group for Research in Mathematics Education at the university. Instead of dwelling on 'traditional' areas such as arithmetic and geometry, SMP dwelt on subjects such as set theory, graph theory and logic, non-cartesian co-ordinate systems, matrix mathematics, affine transforms, vectors and non-decimal number systems.

Course books

SMP, Book 1

This was published in 1965. It was aimed at entry level pupils at

, and was the first book in a series of 4 preparing pupils for Elementary Mathematics Examination at 'O' level.

SMP, Book 3

The computer paper tape motif on early educational material reads "THE SCHOOL MATHEMATICS PROJECT DIRECTED BY BRYAN THWAITES". O O O O O O OO O O O O OO O O O O O O O OOOO O O O O OO O O O O O O O O O O OO O O OO O O O O O O OOO O O O OO O ··································································· O OO OO OO OOO O O O O OO O O O O O O OO OO OO OOO OOO O OO O OO O O OO OOO OO O THE SCHOOL MATHEMATICS PROJECT DIRECTED BY BRYAN THWAITES The code for this tape is introduced in Book 3 as part of the notional computer system now described.

Simpol programming language

The Simpol language was devised by The School Mathematics Project in the 1960s so as to introduce secondary pupils (typically aged 13) to what was then the novel concept of computer programming. It runs on the fictitious Simon computer. An interpreter for the Simpol language (that will run on a present-day PC) can be downloaded from the University of Southampton: https://generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk/smp2/simpol/

References

{{Mathematics in the United Kingdom Mathematics education in the United Kingdom University of Southampton