After graduating in Education and Mathematics at the University of London Institute of Education, Tony Wing taught for a number of years as a primary school teacher and as a school subject leader for mathematics. Always enjoying mathematics teaching in particular, in 1974 he became a Lecturer in Mathematics and Education at Brighton College of Education, specialising in early years mathematics, and there began to develop his approaches to teacher training. He was promoted to Senior Lecturer in Mathematics Education at Brighton Polytechnic (now the University of Brighton) Faculty of Education in 1980, and began researching for his PhD part-time at the University of Southampton School of Education. In 1985 he became an active member of the Association of Teachers of Mathematics (ATM), participating in several working groups and being elected to the ATM General Council (1987-91). He was co-founder, and chair of the Sussex branch of ATM between 1994-8. Between 1987 and 1997 he also undertook a variety of consultancy appointments and was external examiner for primary mathematics education courses at both Brunel and Nottingham Trent universities. His PhD (researching representation in mathematics) was awarded in 1989. Between 1997 and 2005, he was instrumental in leading the University of Brighton School of Education to the achievement of the highest Ofsted grades for mathematics initial teacher training, thereby gaining Brighton University national recognition as a 'Category A' provider of ITT.

Always keen to try out theoretical teaching ideas first in classrooms, Tony was delighted in 1995 to be able to begin developing in schools the teaching approaches that now underlie the Numicon programme. Together with Romey Tacon he was granted two consecutive Teacher Training Agency (now TDA) Teacher Research awards to research and develop approaches to mental arithmetic teaching in infant schools, and the tested outcomes of this research now form the basis of the Numicon Foundation Kit, and Numicon Kits 1 and 2. In 2006 Tony took early retirement from the University of Brighton in order to devote his time more fully to the further development of Numicon in practice.