Of the four programs in this elementary Maths package from Cottage Software, three resolutely refused to load. Even my local BBC agent couldn't do it. His conclusion was the same as mine - poor recording quality.

The one that did load was Elem Sub. Designed for an average six-year-old, it gives practice in subtraction with numbers up to nine.

No preliminaries - the program gets straight down to business. A random number of brightly coloured objects appear on the screen to the accompaniment of a series of sounds, and the child has to count them. Some are then crossed out and the child has to count these.

The subtraction is then carried out twice, once horizontally displayed and once vertically. The correct answer is finally rewarded with a big, red noisy tick. After all the questions have been answered a bug appears on the screen displaying the number of errors made.

Although quite pleasing the program has a number of drawbacks. It will accept any number of wrong answers without offering a correct one, no on-screen instructions are given and there's no 'errortrapping' on the Escape key.

K.O'S.