The teacher’s role in planning, explaining, and questioning is crucial in ensuring that all students have the opportunity to thrive. Furthermore, each teacher has a crucial role in watching and listening to students, collectively and as individuals, and offering support and challenge with the intention of drawing out students’ ideas and enabling them to develop a deep and connected understanding of mathematics.
Mathematics is an interconnected subject in which pupils need to be able to move fluently between representations of mathematical ideas. The programme of study for Key Stage 3 is organised into apparently distinct domains, allowing pupils to build on Key Stage 2 skills and content whilst creating connections across mathematical ideas to develop fluency, mathematical reasoning, and competence in solving increasingly sophisticated problems. By the end of Key Stage 3, students should have developed these skills whilst deepening their subject knowledge in the following areas:
They should also be able to apply their mathematical knowledge in science, geography, computing and other subjects.
By the end of Key Stage 4, students will have studied the mathematical content set out in the Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4 National Curriculum: Programmes of Study, which is then assessed in full in the GCSE Mathematics qualification. Students will have deepened their subject knowledge in the 5 distinct areas whilst mastering the skills of fluency, reasoning and problem-solving, preparing them to achieve at GCSE and beyond.
Mathematics is a creative and highly interconnected discipline that has been developed in many different cultures over centuries, providing the solution to some of history’s most intriguing problems. It is a universal language which is essential to everyday life, critical to science, technology, and engineering, and necessary for financial literacy and most forms of employment. A high-quality mathematics education therefore provides a foundation for understanding the world, the ability to reason mathematically, an appreciation of the beauty and power of mathematics, and a sense of enjoyment and curiosity about the subject.