PEARL Barnes has a passion for helping children learn and aims to improve Somerset pupils' maths skills through a national programme called Every Child Counts.

The 43 year old is the Somerset teacher leader for the Government scheme, employed by the county council, and has been busy since September working with ten schools.

The Crewkerne resident's work was rewarded yesterday with a visit to 10 Downing Street to meet Prime Minster Gordon Brown, along with other teacher leaders on the scheme.

Mrs Barnes said: "Children are a passion of mine. It is where you can begin to make a difference. It is a starting point through education."

She trains the teachers who deliver maths-intensive intervention to underachieving pupils, as well as coaching them and monitoring standards.

She gained the job after 14 years of teaching experience in mainstream and special needs education. Her previous role was in Beaminster as a specialist education needs teacher at an outreach unit for West Dorset schools.

She also has numerous qualifications for the role, including a post graduate certificate in education in primary mathematics and an MA in special education needs. She is vice president of the National Association for Special Educational Needs.

Mrs Barnes said: "I took the job because I needed to move on in my career. I am a good project manager because I am self-motivated. Intensive interaction is something I passionately belief in and something I have always wanted to see happen for maths, but never before has the money been available for it."

The programme is run by Edge Hill University in Lancashire, which won Government funding to develop it. It is a partnership initiative between the Department for Children, Schools and Families, charitable trust Every Child A Chance and local authorities.

It was set up by the Government after a review into primary education identified a significant amount of children need to be given an extra boost in maths. It recommended intervention for the lowest performing five per cent of pupils.

So far, 21 local authorities are involved in the scheme. The programme was piloted from April to July last year and will be in its development phase until 2010. In Somerset, there will be 24 schools on the programme from September.

These include ones in Chard, Yeovil, Crewkerne, Bridgwater, Frome, Taunton, Wells and Shepton Mallet.

The scheme sees 12 selected pupils from each school, aged six and seven, receiving half-an-hour one-to-one sessions for 12 weeks, aiming for 60 sessions with a teacher trained by Mrs Barnes to equip them with techniques to develop their maths skills.

The sessions include playing games and using physical equipment to stimulate learning. A main focus area is looking at how numbers represent or are labelled with words, often a difficult topic for children to understand.

She said: "In the sessions, we find out what the children can do and what they can't, then carry out activities and games to help them improve, such as counting and simple maths, making the exercise a little bit harder each time.

"It is helping kids with special needs. It is not their fault. They do not have a voice so they cannot change the world that they are being bought up in."

Mrs Barnes also has the chance to teach children and is working with two pupils of St Bartholomew's School in Crewkerne.

"I love working with children. It means I can go through the process of teaching and it helps me teach the teachers who deliver the scheme in schools," she said.

The scheme sees pupils registered on a national database so their progress can be tracked up to the age of 16, and Mrs Barnes said so far in Somerset youngsters on the programme are learning three times faster than if they were not on it.