The aims of the new national curriculum for mathematics are to ensure that all pupils:

• 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.

By the end of year 6, children are expected to be ‘secondary ready’. To achieve this, children not only need to be fluent in their knowledge and recall of mathematical facts, but they also need to be competent and confident to be able to reason with and investigate concepts and also be able to apply them to solve problems.  Therefore, once children become fluent in concepts at their year group/ stage in maths, they will then apply these concepts across the curriculum and use them for reasoning and solving problems.  When they are able to do this, it is then that they are considered by the teacher to be fully secure in their knowledge and understanding at that stage.

The National Curriculum 2014 is designed as a year by year programme of study. At The Grange Primary, we call these ‘Stages’ of learning.  The year 1 programme of study therefore is named ‘stage 1’ and so on.

We assess children using the content and concepts at each stage of the curriculum. We also assess children’s skills at reasoning with these concepts and their ability to use them to investigate, solve problems and apply them across the curriculum.