Taunton Deane Partnership College

Maths Overview 2023/24

Key Stage 3-4

Intent

Maths is fundamental in education and society. Our aim is to ensure that all pupils are equipped for the demands of adulthood and the world of work, apprenticeships or further education. Our ethos, therefore, is for all pupils to develop secure building blocks for the development of mathematical understanding and have the ability to allow them to confidently deal with numerate situations in their future lives – this includes calculations, analysis of data, reasoning and problem solving. Pupils should complete Key Stage 3 having the necessary skills to establish a solid foundation of knowledge that will contribute towards a more seamless transition to our Key Stage 4 curriculum. Our intent is that children will aspire to, and be able to achieve, accreditation through Entry Level and GCSE qualifications.

Implementation

KS4 pupils are taught by subject specialists and work is differentiated to meet the needs of each individual student. Most pupils are entered for a Maths GCSE. Pupils who struggle to meet the GCSE criteria are offered Entry Level Qualifications. KS3 pupils are taught the necessary maths skills to prepare them for their GCSE Maths and to prepare them to be confident in everyday situations which require numeracy. We acknowledge that our cohort of pupils at TDPC have had disrupted learning and sometimes struggle to access learning. We are ambitious for all our pupils to access learning so lessons are planned to include those who will need more scaffolding and others who require a greater challenge. To achieve our ambitions, we use differentiated questioning and resources for those who will benefit from additional support.

Students will:

• be encouraged to take part in maths lessons every week in small groups. Each week will have a clear Mathematical objective.

• be encouraged to develop independent thinking through problem solving.

• be encouraged to be tenacious is their maths problem solving.

• have opportunities to grow in their fluency of basic everyday mathematical concepts across all areas of the curriculum.

• receive verbal feedback every lesson on their progress.

• receive weekly written feedback on their progress.

• receive formative and summative assessment that will enable the next steps of learning to be planned for.

• understand links with other curriculum areas as appropriate - including data handling and equations in science.

Impact

To foster an enjoyment and confidence in Maths using a variety of teaching methods. To explore topics with students and work with them to develop their problem-solving techniques to enable them to better deal with numerate situations in the future. The impact on our pupils is clear progress, sustained learning and transferable skills, enabling pupils to become literate in numeracy, which supports financial independance. Pupils work is consistently marked across TDPC and assessment is recorded by a variety of methods – school books, contributions in class and assessments. Pupils can achieve Entry Level 1, 2 or 3 which are solid steps of progress and can continue to support further learning, which can then lead to pupils gaining a result at GCSE.