A school has teamed up with Bradford Council and Bradford College to bring technology into the maths classroom thanks to their share of 90,000 euros in British Council funding.

The team from Bradford, which includes the maths department at Parkside School in Cullingworth and Bradford College’s maths PGCE team, will half the funding for the European education project with a school from the Netherlands in a bid to improve maths lessons through the use of technology.

The project, spearheaded by the authority’s Vanessa Wears, teaching and learning consultant – secondary mathematics, will see teachers visit each other’s schools and take lessons as part of the scheme, which has been funded by the British Council’s Comenius Regio arm, which funds partnership between European schools.

Miss Wears said Bradford’s 45,000 euros will go towards travel expenses for the teachers along with iPads to help them get used to the technology.

Miss Wears said: “We want to get the teachers comfortable with using technology in the classroom, because the kids use technology all the time in the big wide world, but not in the classroom, and we want to change that.

“We want to make the lessons relevant to the students. Things are moving quickly, technology moves quickly and the kids use Facebook or all these different things outside and we want to bring some of them into the classroom.

“There are certain parts of maths which technology can make a bit more engaging and we want to harness the kids engagement with technology in maths lessons.” The scheme will see the teachers from both countries develop the use of new technologies in the classroom, including using iPods and iPads.

The first exchange will take place when Dutch teachers visit Bradford from Sunday to Tuesday, December 11. Bradford’s team will then visit Holland in March before the Dutch teachers return for a second visit in June.

Michelle Harness, mathematics curriculum leader at Parkside School, said: “It is a really good opportunity for the school, for the pupils of the school and also for the staff for their own professional development.”

She said it was a good idea to embrace modern technology into lessons.