Apex Collaborative Trust follows a curriculum that engineers success using a mastery approach. Following the White Rose Maths curriculum with reference to the NCETM Spines, ensuring small-step progression through careful curriculum sequencing. It draws heavily upon research conducted by the EEF (Education Endowment Fund) and their recommendations.

The NCETM Spine documents enhance our pedagogical approach and ensure teachers can plan and deliver lessons that align with the DfE's non-statutory guidance for teaching mathematics whilst meeting the needs of the children in their class. Careful planning and preparation enable teachers to draw on the pedagogical approaches from the Spines to enhance the White Rose Maths teaching sequence.

The National Curriculum for maths ensures that children:

“…become fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics, including through varied and frequent practice with increasingly complex problems over time, so that pupils develop conceptual understanding and the ability to recall and apply knowledge rapidly and accurately."

"...reason mathematically by following a line of enquiry, conjecturing relationships and generalisations, and developing an argument, justification or proof using mathematical language."

"...can solve problems by applying their mathematics to a variety of routine and non-routine problems with increasing sophistication, including breaking down problems into a series of simpler steps and persevering in seeking solutions."

At Lord Street Primary School, these three elements are embedded within Maths lessons and are developed over time. Maths is a rich and interconnected subject and our aim is to support children to move fluently between different concepts and different representations of mathematical ideas, through both procedural and conceptual variation. Programmes of study are carefully designed to enable children to make these rich connections across mathematical ideas and to develop fluency, reasoning and confidence to solve increasingly sophisticated problems.

Our approach aims to provide all children with full access to a creative and engaging curriculum, enabling them to develop their independence, confidence and competence. Concepts are taught through manageable small steps, based around White Rose Maths schemes and the NCETM Professional Development materials, which build on skills children have learnt. We use mistakes and misconceptions as an essential part of learning and enable children to acquire maths skills that can be recalled quickly and transferred and applied in different contexts.

Small steps for both declarative and procedural understanding are planned for, giving due consideration to common misconceptions that are likely to occur. In order for children to retrieve knowledge from long-term memory, ‘It’s nothing new’ and daily arithmetic are carefully considered and planned into the curriculum from KS1 through to KS2.

Our overall aim is to prevent widened gaps in learning by having coherently planned units, which provide teachers with some autonomy to tailor teaching so that it is adapted to meet the needs and next steps of all learners – allowing them the freedom to excel. The reactive aspect of the curriculum allows teachers to seek out these gaps and implement timely interventions or pre-learning opportunities.

Teachers have high expectations of all pupils with SEND. Teachers do not compromise the requirement for overlearning to ensure automaticity. Staff will also use the decided whether to wait, or whether to act approach.  This means that there is no automatic assumption that pupils identified as SEN cannot achieve. Early identification of gaps is a key component of our approach. Drawing from the DfE Ready to Progress document, teachers identify and assess gaps in learning within a cohort. Furthermore, diagnostic assessment tools such as Sandwell Early Numeracy Assessment ascertain the next small steps for the very small proportion of pupils progressing outside the age-related expectations of their year group.

Developing fluency

At Lord Street, we are proud to be taking part in the development of the NCETM Mastering Number Programme across  Key Stage 2.   Developed by the National Centre for Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics (NCETM), the programme supports children in developing fluency and confidence with number.

Mastering Number aims to secure strong foundations in number sense for all children from Reception through to Year 6. At Lord Street, we are introducing the programme in Year 4 and Year 5, while continuing to deliver White Rose Maths Fluency Bee sessions in KS1 .

Through regular, carefully structured sessions, children develop:

• fluency in calculation;
• confidence and flexibility when working with number;
• a secure understanding of multiplicative relationships;
• rapid recall of multiplication and division facts; and
• strong number sense.

These essential skills enable children to reason mathematically, solve problems effectively and approach new learning with confidence. When children are flexible with number, they are better equipped to select efficient strategies and explain their thinking.

By implementing Mastering Number and Fluency Bee, we provide an equitable approach to mathematics, ensuring that all learners have the opportunity to succeed and thrive. Our aim is that every child leaves Lord Street with the mathematical understanding and confidence needed to flourish as they move on to secondary school and beyond.

EYFS White Rose Maths

In EYFS we follow the White Rose Guidance for Nursery and Reception, which is used to ensure coverage and progression and also introduces the children to key concepts, mathematical language and understanding.

Maths provision in EYFS includes adult-led sessions, group activities and child-led learning through enhanced provision, where children are able to access skills independently. Alongside this, children are given opportunities to follow their own interests through play, which should encourage them to foster a lifelong love of maths. The Learning Trajectories are used as a formative assessment tool to support teachers in identifying gaps in learning and planning next steps.

Quality Assurance

We have developed a collaborative approach to quality assurance which supports teachers to reflect and refine the sequencing of the core knowledge and foundational concepts for their subjects, and evaluate the effectiveness of the principles of direct instructional teaching whilst securing the skills to know when knowledge is secure before pupils move on. This is overseen and facilitated by the Maths Lead, who then uses this information to plan and monitor next steps in the subject’s development.

Assessment in Maths

Fundamental to the effectiveness of our curriculum is our approach to assessment. We utilise a responsive approach to assessment strategies which focus on moving the learning forward and the activation of learners as owners of their own learning. We recognise that effective feedback should be specific, accurate and timely and provide clear guidance on how to improve. Pupils are explicitly taught meta-cognitive strategies through dialogic talk as well as how to monitor, plan and evaluate their learning.  The information provided by assessments is essential for planning and adaptive teaching. We assess the children after every unit of learning and use these assessments to address any gaps in learning through intervention or whole-class teaching. In addition to this, children also complete end-of-term assessments.

The rationale of our mathematics curriculum is based upon guidance from:

The Education Endowment Foundation Improving Mathematics in Early Years, Key Stage 1, Key Stage 2 and 3 Improving Mathematics in the Early Years and Key Stage 1 | EEF (educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk) Improving Mathematics in Key Stages 2 and 3 | EEF (educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk)

The Ofsted Research Review of Mathematics Research review series: mathematics - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

The Department for Education ready to progress non-statutory guidance Mathematics guidance: key stages 1 and 2 (covers years 1 to 6) (publishing.service.gov.uk)

The National Centre for the Teaching of mathematics (NCETM) Home | NCETM