In line with modern educational theory, the use of the soroban fulfils all the requirements of the visual, auditory, and kinaesthetic learning styles.

My personal opinion is that pupils move to the abstract in the primary school too quickly.  The requirements of the National Curriculum insist that teachers go at break-neck speed through topics which are not fully understood by the children.

As I have worked in primary schools, a college of further education and now a secondary school, I have seen the consequence of this constant striving for exam results at the expense of real understanding in maths.  It is not surprising to me that children are put off by maths, when they constantly feel that they don't understand fully what is going on, or they get an answer without understanding why they got that answer.

I see children coming to the secondary school now not understanding basic arithmetic.  Very few know their tables, and if you ask about topics, they say that they have ‘heard’ about it, but don't know what it is.

At the other end I saw students at college who had passed with reasonable grades, mathematics G.C.S.E.  However they still did not understand the basics and relied on the calculator to do multiplication, division, percentages, and conversions.  They didn't understand the relationship between vulgar fractions, decimals, and percentages, and hardly any of them knew their tables.  And very surprisingly didn't know how many mm in a cm, ml in a litre, etc.