In 2003, Matt Nixon and Steve Lomax founded Kangaroo Maths. The original idea was, through kangaroomaths.com, to provide schools with access to the innovative ‘Bring on the Maths!’ resource – launched to Gloucestershire schools on Bonfire Night in 2003.
This soon developed into Matt and Steve embracing a simple philosophy of using their website to share, for free, resources and ideas with other colleagues in the locality: ‘Kenny’s Pouch’ was built. They did however forget two things: the Internet is a bigger place than ‘the locality’, and male kangaroos don’t have pouches. Because of the first oversight – and despite the second – ‘Bring on the Maths!’ is now used in schools all over the country, and even in places as diverse as El Salvador, Dubai and Hong Kong. Disappointingly, no school in Australia has ever made the leap – New Zealand is as close as it has got. Kenny’s Pouch has expanded enormously over the last fifteen years and this trend is set to continue as schools are faced with the challenges and opportunities of new curricula.
Why ‘Kangaroo Maths’?
Matt and Steve were rushed into choosing a domain name over a snatched coffee between two maths lessons. Their first choice was ‘xfactor.com’ (Nixon/Lomax, and a hint of Maths) but as teaching with a puppet kangaroo – Kenny – had become a worryingly regular feature of their teaching at the time, Kangaroo Maths was suddenly born! Do they regret not snapping up their first idea before Simon Cowell came along and changed British TV for the next decade? Not at all. Really. Not in the slightest.
Kangaroo Maths continues to be committed to supporting teachers in providing an engaging, exciting and enjoyable curriculum by developing practical ideas and resources that can be used immediately, with ease, in the classroom such as Bring on The Maths.