Sanidhya Sharma has a secret that every child in his class would like to dig out — how did he suddenly start scoring high marks in maths? “It is because of Kumon, but don’t tell anybody,” grins the Class IV student of DPS, East of Kailash. It’s a secret that around three lakh students in 45 countries share.

In 1954 in Osaka, another eight-year-old boy had trouble with arithmetic and came home with a terrible report card. As in any other home, the mother put her foot down and said this just couldn’t go on; and the father, a teacher, finally set about making a system for his kid to learn maths. The father was Toru Kumon and his mode of teaching soon became a movement and the unofficial exorcist of math phobia.

After doing its equivalent of bell, books and candle in classrooms across the world, Kumon came to Delhi three years ago. It barely managed 100 students then; now it has about 1,000 students poring over worksheets everyday.

At its very basic, it breaks maths and languages into fundamentals, which are then drilled into students, through repetitive practice. “For a young child tackling additions, the first step is to add one. He has to finish several pages of worksheets in which he adds one to numbers. It is only when the lesson is ingrained in his head that he moves on to adding two,” says Shaista Shaw, field support and planning manager of Kumon. For English, the thrust is on developing reading skills and comprehension by breaking lessons down to components like simple sentences and grammar.

While critics have pointed out that Kumon’s drilling method stops kids from thinking on their feet and robs math of its many joys, Kumon happily swears by homework — and most children don’t complain. They attend classes just twice a week but take home enough worksheets to practise every day. “The Kumon system revolves around the habit of everyday practice. It is 20 per cent concept and 80 per cent repetition. After a concept like addition, multiplication, verb or adjective is explained, a student has to fill as many as 10 pages of worksheet using that one concept,” explains Shaw. Sanchi Gupta, a Class VII student of DPS, RK Puram, who is enrolled for English and never misses her daily ritual with the Kumon worksheets, says, “I’ve been here for six months, but I feel more confident about my language and diction.”

The system of repetition and constant practice gets a thumbs-up even from teachers like Alpana Ahuja of Amity International School. “While schools teach formula and calculation methods, Kumon breaks it down into components and makes sure that each component is practised repeatedly until there’s no room for error.”

There is no blackboard, special learning aid or, after the first few lessons, a teacher. Students tackle worksheets by themselves and at their own pace, and can move on to higher grades in a few months. Yajur Ahuja, a Class V student at Mother’s International, for instance, will soon begin Class VII level mathematics. “So, while his classmates in school are working on decimals, he will be handling linear equations and unitary method here. This means his school maths becomes very easy,” says an instructor.

At its eight centres across the NCR, Kumon has four-year-olds as well as university students, doing simple calculation or differential calculus. On the anvil are centres in Chennai and Pune. The fee is Rs 1,461 per subject per month, plus an enrolment fee of Rs 674.