Maths at Bradfield CE Primary

At Bradfield CE Primary School, we believe that all areas of maths are an essential life skill and we are committed to enabling our children to become effective, accurate and efficient mathematicians and problem solvers. We aim to provide our children with a purposeful maths curriculum based on key skills and knowledge which are explored through real life contexts. Our maths curriculum places an emphasis on the mastery approach so builds on itself incrementally throughout the school, giving children a chance to learn, practise, embed, apply and extend the new skills they have gained. They will become increasingly curious, resilient, independent and articulate in their maths learning and experiences.  

Our long-term maths plan, is built on the National Curriculum (2014) statements and objectives and we use the structure and sequence of the White Rose Maths framework. Lessons are taught daily using a variety of different approaches to ensure skills have been mastered: 

• Concrete resources are used to support learners understanding of processes 

• Pictorial approaches to help visualise maths e.g. use of bar models 

• Abstract methods taught consistently across school 

Our mastery curriculum is sequenced to include opportunities for all children to practice and recall core declarative and procedural knowledge so that this becomes secure in their long-term memory. Therefore, every maths lesson starts with a ‘Do Now’ to embed and apply previous learning and to recall fact from topic taught previously.

This focus on depth of understanding of key concepts helps children to build schema and gain automaticity, allowing them to make strong links between facts and methods and apply this knowledge when developing problem solving strategies. Live marking from all adults ensures that children receive quick and timely feedback to address misconceptions or provide further challenge and ensure progress. Where a child has clearly struggled to pick up a concept, they will attend a ‘scoop group’ on the same day to ensure they keep up with the rest of the class. 

At Bradfield, we aim for pupils to become true masters of their year group content and be creative with new knowledge in multiple ways. We intend for all pupils to: 

• Children to acquire the core facts, methods and strategies so that they will become fluent, confident and able mathematicians by the end of KS2 and go on to succeed at KS3. 

• Children will become positive and resilient mathematicians, who are keen to seek out challenge and persevere through more complex problem solving using learned strategies. 

• Children of all abilities will be able to succeed in all maths, gaining confidence from early successes. 

• KS2 SATS in 2023 the school achieved 76% of children gaining the expected standard in maths. Following the revision of our maths curriculum, this increased to 92% in 2024, showing the impact of these approaches.