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Abacus training attracts a lot of extravagant claims. We would rather show you the serious independent research, tell you what it found, and be equally clear about what it did not find.
The headline study
The most rigorous work on mental abacus instruction to date was carried out by researchers from Harvard, Stanford and the University of California, San Diego, and published in the journal Child Development in 2016.
It was a randomised controlled trial — the strongest study design available in education research. 204 children in India were randomly assigned either to mental abacus instruction or to a control group receiving standard supplementary maths instruction, and were followed for three years.
Randomisation matters more than most people realise. Without it, a study of abacus students is really a study of families who choose abacus classes — families who are already more engaged with their children's education. Randomising removes that confound, which is why this trial is worth far more than a hundred testimonials.
Children who received mental abacus instruction significantly outperformed the control group on arithmetic — and the children who gained most were those who started with stronger spatial working memory.
Randomised controlled trial · 204 children · three years
Child Development, 2016 · Harvard, Stanford and UC San Diego
We think the honest version is more persuasive than the exaggerated one. A programme that reliably makes a child better at arithmetic, more practised at holding and manipulating information in their head, and more confident for having cleared nine graded levels is worth three years of Saturday mornings. It does not also need to be magic.
Accreditation & recognition
Accreditation is not proof that a programme works, but it does tell you an outside body has looked at the curriculum and the way it is delivered.
The National Association for the Education of Young Children, the Association for Childhood Education International, and the World Abacus and Mental Arithmetic Association.
UCMAS holds a Guinness World Record for the largest human image of an abacus — 958 participants, set in Gujarat in September 2018 — along with entries in the Limca, Asia, India and Malaysia Books of Records.
Running since 1993 in more than 80 countries, with over 6,000 centres in India alone. Longevity at that scale is its own form of evidence.
Book a free demo class. Watch how a session is taught, then decide. That is a better test than any page on a website.
