A math professor at Memorial University says it's no surprise that Newfoundland and Labrador students are lagging behind in mathematics performance.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development released new numbers, stacking students from this province in 7th place in Canada.

The international study looked at math scores of 15-year-old students across the country.

Professor Sherry Mantyka said the province's math curriculum has been lagging behind others for years.

"Students are now completely frustrated from an early age because there's no structure to the mathematics they're being taught in primary and elementary," she said.

"It's a free-for-all, you know, be creative. Look at all the different strategies you can use to compute nine-times-seven instead of having to memorize that that is 63."

Mantyka said students can't learn a complex subject like math without any structure.

According to Mantyka, the provincial government has made some changes to the math curriculum in recent years, but the general philosophy has not changed so the program is still flawed.