Every year, Utrecht University in collaboration with Malmberg (educational publisher) and other institutes involved in mathematics education, organises the MathInquiryDay (‘Grote Rekendag’) for primary education in the Netherlands.

This MathInquiryDay is a day for all children from grades 1 to 8, devoted to mathematical literacy. It focuses on (promoting) inquiry-based learning where students are involved in working on a set of coherent challenging meaningful activities.

During the MathInquiryDay, children are challenged via assignments in order to learn to use their mathematical skills (Jonker et al., 2019). The MathInquiryDay is a powerful ‘add-on’ to the daily practice of mathematics education. During MathInquiryDay, children actively work together on problems that fit in with their daily lives and through these more open assignments, the aim is to show children that mathematics is fun and useful (Keijzer et al., 2009). This mathematical literacy approach fits into the broader competence of ‘scientific literacy’, absolutely necessary to be(come) a critical citizen.