Bring mental maths into your school
A structured programme for ages 5 to 14, delivered inside the curriculum or as an extracurricular club. Your own teachers are trained and certified to run it.
INDIGO Mental Training Club provides an abacus-based mental maths programme for ages 5 to 14. Children start with a physical abacus, learn to picture it, and progress to calculating quickly in their heads. It is widely considered one of the best brain fitness activities for children of this age.
Why schools run it
Enrichment that is academic
Most before and after school provision is sport or arts. This is an academic option parents actively want, which makes your wraparound offer stronger without adding another sports club.
It works for children at both ends
Abacus maths helps children who are afraid of maths and struggle with numbers to build confidence, because they see visible results.
It also helps children who are good at maths but are not being stretched and are not reaching their potential.
Cognitive development, taught through numbers
The arithmetic is the visible part. What children are building underneath it is focus, working memory, concentration and sequential thinking, and those carry into every subject they learn.
A proven method
Tested in a controlled study with a matched control group, and taught to over 150,000 children across 15 countries in the last 10 years.
It makes you distinctive
Very few schools in the UK offer this. It is something concrete to show prospective parents at an open day.
You choose how to run it
Some schools fund it and deliver it as part of their offer. Others run it as a paid extra with parents covering the cost. Both work, and we will talk through which suits your setting.
Two ways to run it
In the curriculum
Taught as a timetabled subject, often starting as a pilot with one or two classes and expanding once you have seen how children respond.
As an extracurricular club
Run before or after school. A straightforward way to start without changing your timetable.
What your teachers get
Your teachers are trained and certified in the method. They get the full curriculum, lesson plans, a homework guide and the teaching platform, plus weekly calls and access to our partner community for as long as they are teaching.
No prior knowledge of the method is needed. The training assumes none.
The evidence
Abacus-based mental arithmetic has been studied independently by universities including Manchester, Kyoto and Shinshu, looking at its effects on calculation speed, memory and cognitive performance.
The INDIGO method has also been tested directly, in a controlled study with a matched control group drawn from parallel classes in the same schools.
Children following the method reached the highest performance band at significantly higher rates than the control group across every measure, with the largest gap in visual and short-term memory.
Teachers taking part also reported clear gains in memory and motivation, and most parents supported the programme becoming part of the school day.
The full study is available on request.
- 184children studied
- 36weeks
- 68% vs 25%reached the top band for visual and short-term memory
- 70%of teachers reported a significant memory gain
- 80%of parents backed it becoming part of the school day
We run a separate offer for schools
Schools work differently from individual tutors or tuition centres, so we have a separate offer with its own pricing, tailored to how you want to run it.
Fill in the form and we'll come back to you within two working days with something that fits your school, not a generic price list.
No obligation, and no pressure to decide on the spot. This is simply the fastest way to get real numbers for your setting.