Intent
At Oldway Primary School, the aims of the national curriculum (fluency, reasoning and problem solving) are embedded within daily maths lessons and developed consistently over time. We are committed to ensuring that children are able to recognise the importance of maths in the wider world and that they are also able to use their mathematical skills and knowledge confidently in their lives in a range of different contexts.
We want all children to enjoy mathematics and to experience success in the subject, with the ability to reason mathematically. We are committed to developing children’s curiosity about the subject, as well as an appreciation of the beauty and power of mathematics.
Implementation
We believe pupils develop mathematical understanding through connecting new mathematical ideas and concepts to previous learning. Teachers use S-planning to ensure maths lessons are a carefully sequenced conceptual journey. New concepts are taught through the use of carefully chosen models and images, which reveal the structure behind mathematical concepts and build understanding from year to year.
Pupils practice new learning, using a range of examples to deepen understanding, as well as applying their learning in a range of non-standard problems. We believe it is important for pupils to gain automaticity in basic number facts and procedures so time is given to develop mathematical fluency, which is planned and taught regularly.
We believe that all pupils should have access to high quality tasks and expect the majority of pupils to move on at broadly the same rate. Those pupils who grasp concepts quickly are provided with opportunities to deepen rather their understanding rather than simply moving onto new mathematical learning. To support pupils who are in danger of falling behind, we use pre-teaching and assigning competence as an intervention to enable more pupils to take an active part in mathematics lessons. These principles and features characterise this approach and convey how our curriculum is implemented.
Impact
The school has a supportive ethos and our approaches support the children in developing their collaborative and independent skills, as well as empathy and the need to recognise the achievement of others. Students can underperform in mathematics because they think they cannot do it or are not naturally good at it.
Regular and ongoing assessment informs teaching, as well as intervention, to support and enable the success of each child. These factors ensure that we are able to maintain high standards, with achievement at the end of KS2 above the national average, as well an increasingly high proportion of children demonstrating greater depth, at the end of each phase.