The Portage la Prairie School Board heard from the school division's K to 8 Numeracy Coach at last night's board meeting.

Patti Lawrence's position is only a half time job, but she will be moving to full time next school year. She gives a overview of how the year went.

"They year has been really great. I think that it's been a learning curve for sure, for myself and the teachers involved. We've got a lot of exciting projects in the works, we're working on some assessments that have shown some really positive results. I think next year with the job being 100% we can build on what we've started this year, and see even better results."

Lawrence feels Manitoba's finally starting to focus on the national assessments.

"I think there's always a need in numeracy, but over the years Manitoba has shown to be unfavourable in national assessments such as PESA (Program for International Student Assessment) and PCAP (Pan-Canadian Assessment Program), and so the Department of Education is even saying we need to put more into numeracy. Literacy has been really the forefront for many years, and I think now divisions are ready to bring in the numeracy piece."

Lawrence says tracking the students' data over the year, and the assessments she does are important for receiving government funding.

"The government sets up funding for schools through general grants, as well as other grants that are very specific to numeracy and literacy, and the AAA (Aboriginal Academic Achievement Course) grant. So because they both require literacy data and numeracy data, so the math facts assessment that we've been piloting in a few schools, we can use that data for those grants, to show growth in the students progress."

Lawrence is thrilled with how the first year has gone, and is excited to be moving to full time.